MS Project 2003 - Issue with Import of Assignment Data from Excel

[warobinson]

This issue occurs when I am importing Assignment data from an excel
worksheet. The issue is intermittent and occurs only on the last entry in the
Excel worksheet from which the data is being imported. Any combination of the
following conditions may occur:
1. the first 4-6 characters of the Assignment Comments being imported end up
scrambled on the assignment in MS Project
2. The updated fields Work, Remaining Work, and/or Units might not be
updated on the Assignment with the value from Excel
3. In some cases, the Assignment Comments might be entirely removed.

When the issue has occurred, I've tried switching the last entry and second
to last entry (different assignments on different tasks) in the excel
worksheet but the Assignment data for the last entry still incurred one of
the fore-mentioned conditions. I have considered creating a 'dummy'
task/assignment and placing it as the last entry on the import excel
worksheet but then I'll need to 'hide' this dummy task/assignment; keep it
from displaying in views/reports/etc. - and that would involve a lot of
changes. Perhaps someone else has experienced this issue and has a better
solution?

I am using MS Office Project Standard 2003 with SP 3.

 

[JulieS]

Hello warobinson,

How are you importing the data -- through code or through an import
map? If you are using an import map, what is your merge field? If
you are using code, best to re-post your question including the code
details to the Project Developer newsgroup.

I hope this helps. Let us know how you get along.

Julie
Project MVP

Visit http://project.mvps.org/ for the FAQs and additional
information about Microsoft Project

 

[warobinson]

Hi JulieS,

Thanks for responding. I'm using an import map and the merge field is the
assignment's unique id .

 

[JulieS]

Thanks for the information. Have you experimented with not
importing the comments? I assume the "comments" you are referring
to are data you are attempting to add to the Notes field?

One of the reasons things may be going awry is that the Notes field
is actually a rich text field and the ability to write and retrieve
data from that field is a bit different that other straight text
fields.

Julie

 

[warobinson]

Hi JulieS,

Sorry for not being precise here - the comments field i am referring to is a
custom text field and there are several separate and distinct imports of
Assignment data that are experiencing this intermittent issue:
Import 1 - Import of Work and the 'Comments' custom text field
Import 2 - Import of Finish (Date)
Import 3 - Import of Actual Work
Import 4 - Import of Remaining work and the 'Comments' custom text field
Import 5 - Import of Assignment Units

The issue occurs only with the last row of assignment data being imported,
all rows of assignment data preceding the last row are imported correctly.

 

[JulieS]

Hi,

Okay, so if I understand you correctly the issue with importing is
not chronic and appears to only impact the last assignment imported.
You noted you are running SP3 in an earlier post. The issue you are
seeing is certainly not expected. The best I can suggest is see if
there may be some corruption that has been introduced in the file.
Try (on a copy) following the steps outlined at FAQ 43 'Handling
project file corruption and/or bloat" at
http://project.mvps.org/faqs.htm.

Try repairing the file, run through the imports and see if the
problem recurs.

Julie

 

[warobinson]

Hi JulieS,

I tried repairing the file (saving as a MPD file, opening the MPD file and
then saving as MPP file) and reran the import but the issue remained.
However, I did notice that in the Excel worksheet, the row immediately
following the last Assignment Data import data row had a value of "" (blank)
for the Unique ID, so on a whim I changed that value to a 0 (as Unique ID is
numeric) and retested. The assignment was updated correctly. Now I need to
run further tests to confirm this will solve the issue. I'll post the results
after I've run the additional tests.


Bill

 

[JulieS]

Great Bill, keep us posted.

Julie

Hi JulieS,

I tried repairing the file (saving as a MPD file, opening the MPD
file and
then saving as MPP file) and reran the import but the issue
remained.
However, I did notice that in the Excel worksheet, the row
immediately
following the last Assignment Data import data row had a value of
"" (blank)
for the Unique ID, so on a whim I changed that value to a 0 (as
Unique ID is
numeric) and retested. The assignment was updated correctly. Now I
need to
run further tests to confirm this will solve the issue. I'll post
the results
after I've run the additional tests.


Bill