Exporting Project Plans
LiveProject has the ability to export project plans to a number of different data
formats; E-mail, PowerPoint, Excel and Comma Separated Values files (CSV). You will
need to have Excel and PowerPoint installed for these exports to function correctly.
For E-mails we recommend Outlook.
Common for each of these exports is that you can select to export only selected
tasks, unselected tasks or all tasks. This enables you to quickly extract the exact
information you need or contact the responsible task owners with just a few clicks.
Below is a brief description of the supported formats with a list of specific features
for each.
E-mail
When exporting to E-mail, LiveProject will generate an E-mail based on a template.
It will extract information from a task table and populate the template with actual
task data. LiveProject comes with several predefined E-mail templates, but you can
easily copy or create new ones.
Tip: When you build your templates, press F1 to get detailed help on all
the available fields and options.
Once the generated E-mail is completed, LiveProject will launch your E-mail program
(Outlook is preferred), and allow you to send the E-mail from your own account.
Here you can resolve unknown E-mail addresses or add other recipients. Note that
LiveProject will populate the E-mail address fields using the "Email Address" field
in Microsoft Project. If you populate this field for each resource in your project,
you can quickly send E-mails to your task owners.
PowerPoint
Exporting to PowerPoint requires that you use the special PowerPoint templates.
Like E-mail, these templates can be changed to include almost any project field.
Exporting works with fields embedded in word-art or slide notes.
LiveProject is installed with several templates available, which can be quickly
installed on your system during the export process. To define your own template,
we recommend you use one of KaDonk's templates as a base.
Since PowerPoint is a presentation application, the export has three distinct data
sets:
- Project information, which includes overall data such as project duration.
- Task information, which includes fields for each task. Resources can be exported
to a separate slide or into a list.
- Resource information, which includes fields for each resource. Tasks can be exported
to a separate slide, or into a list.
PowerPoint exports can take time, especially with many tasks. Have patience and
wait until the export is complete until opening the generated PowerPoint slideshow.
Excel
Exporting to Excel allows you to select the columns to export for tasks, resources
and change history. You can also choose whether or not to include the header row.
Exporting to Excel has several advantages over exporting to CSV and then importing
to Excel:
- You can name the individual sheets into which each exported table (tasks, resources,
history) is exported. If the sheet doesn't already exist, it will be created.
- Each exported table can have a named range. LiveProject will update the range after
each export to include all the exported data. You can use these named ranges in
pivot tables or references, without having to change anything on subsequent exports.
- Exporting will update existing Excel sheets with the latest data. Simply perform
a new export to automatically update existing Excel files.
Comma Separated Values (CSV)
CSV files are Comma Separated Value files, essentially a text file with each value
separated by a comma. LiveProject supports a number of other separators and text-qualifiers
in order to support almost all other programs that can import CSV files.
LiveProject has options to export each table to separate files in one operation,
as well as to specify exactly which fields to export per table.