Export MS Project to Excel

Export to Excel in MS Project

Project 2016, 2019, 2021 and 2024 and the Project Online desktop client export to Excel through the Export Wizard (Microsoft: export your project to Excel):

1. Choose File > Export > Save Project as File, and under Other File Types double-click Microsoft Excel Workbook. Pick a folder and a name.
2. In the Export Wizard choose Selected Data, then New map (or a map you saved before).
3. Choose what to export (tasks, resources or assignments) and pick the fields for each column. The Base on Table button fills the list from a table, such as the Entry table.
4. Save the map if you will export again, then Finish.

The workbook holds the fields you mapped, not the whole project: Microsoft notes that you can export field data to Excel but not an entire project, and that some columns may need cleaning afterwards, for example numbers that should be dates (Microsoft: file formats).

Project for the web and Planner

• Project for the web: select the three dots (…) in the top right corner, then Export to Excel. The file has a project summary above a table of tasks.
• Planner: open the … menu on the plan header and choose Export plan to Excel (Microsoft: export a plan to Excel). The file goes to your Downloads folder.

Without MS Project

If someone sends you an .mpp file and you do not have MS Project, ask them to save a copy as XML: File > Save As, then XML Format (*.xml) as the file type. Microsoft's XML format holds the whole project, so nothing has to be chosen or mapped. Open the .xml file on this page, then use Activities (CSV) under the results. A binary .mpp file cannot be read here.

What the CSV contains

• One row per task: ID, name, WBS, type, status, start and finish, original and remaining duration, total and free float, % complete and whether the file marks the task as critical.
• Start and finish are dates Excel can sort and filter. Whether a date is actual or planned is in its own column next to it.
• Durations and float are in working days, as MS Project shows them for the project's hours per day.
• If you searched the table or showed only flagged tasks, the CSV has just those rows and says so at the bottom.
• The last lines say which file the rows came from, when they were exported, and that they were made with schedulepeek.com.

Excel turns IDs and WBS codes such as 1.10 or 00123 into numbers when it opens a CSV by double-click. To keep them as they are, open the file with Data > From Text/CSV and set those columns to Text.