Joe -- I don't know any way to export a report to Excel
(perhaps another reader of this newsgroup knows how), but
you can often create a view that is about the same as a
report, and these views export to Excel pretty well. For
example, the view "resource usage" can be made to look
very similar to the report with the same name. Create
your own table with just the columns you want. When you
are ready to go to Excel you can invoke that table and
simply copy and paste, or you can use "save as..." and
select Excel, after which you tell Project what map to
use. You can create a map that looks like your custom
table.
The biggest problem I have found exporting to Excel is
the loss of Project's outline structure. Summary and
detail tasks come out looking alike. To overcome this,
one approach is to export just the detail tasks (uncheck
the summaries option in tools-options-view). A more
thorough approach is to recreate the outline in Excel.
To do this:
Add the "outline level" column to the table being
exported.
When you get over to Excel, insert a series of about 10
blank columns after the task name.
Then create a simple Excel formula that moves the task
name over the same number of columns as the outline
level.
Copy this formula into all the blank columns, to capture
the task name if the column indent equals the outline
level number.
You can make this process into an Excel macro without too
much trouble, so it runs with one button push. I did
this for a client that wanted to distribute MS Project
outputs to Excel users who did not have MS Project.
Regards, David Hunsberger
MS Project Instructor
www.it7.com