Report Exporting

[DME]

I am new to MS Project and do not use it at all. I have been asked to
investigate whether reports produced in MS project can be exported to Excel.
I do not have the product installed on my machine, so trying to figure this
out is making the process a little harder than normal. We have a manager
that has created a report that appears to be in a spreadsheet format but he
doesn't think he can export it to Excel format. Is this true? Thanks for
your help!!

 

[JackD]

This is probably true. The canned reports (and even the custom reports) from
Project are not exportable. All you can do is print them. The closest you
can get to a "soft" copy is to print to a .pdf file (using 3rd party
software) and even in that case, you can't edit the report or pull the data
out to excel.

You can use access to create reports, but it will take a fair amount of
skill to figure out how.

 

[JulieD]

However, you can export data to excel, so maybe (depending on which report
it is) the manager can export the raw data to excel and manipulate it there.
He can use file / save as and use the wizard to help him export the data or
have a look at "analyse timscaled data in excel" option on the analysis
toolbar.

Cheers
JulieD

 

[Sarah]

Jack,

I'm not sure why you say this isn't true. If you select File>Save As
in MS Project and select a file type of Excel Workbook, you can then
use an included export map or build your own to get the information
contained in the Project reports. True, you would then have to do
some formatting in Excel, but it most certainly is possible to export
Project reports to Excel.

Sarah
kikos@(removethis)nationwide.com

 

[JulieD]

Hi Sarah

i think what Jack was saying is that there is no option to export an actual
"report" (view/reports) to excel - as you can in Access (nice, handy little
toolbar icon concept).

Cheers
JulieD

 

[JackD]

That about sums it up.
The person asking the question was not a project user and was discussing the
built-in reports. Those reports can't be exported in soft copy.

There are other ways as I mentioned, but they all involve a certain
familiarity with Project and excel to make them work. I don't imagine that
the person posting the question was going to dive in and start writing some
VBA to make their own custom report since they are not familiar with MS
Project in the first place.

Querying the database is trivial IF you are not dealing with timescaled data
AND you know how project stores the data AND you are familiar with writing
SELECT statements.
Just like juggling is trivial if you know how.

 

[John]

Sarah,
Built-in Reports that contain only non-timescaled data can be exported
via an export map. However many of the Reports contain timescaled data
and they cannot directly be exported using a map. Some timescaled data
can be exported by using the "analyze timescaled data in Excel" utility
found on the "Analysis" toolbar but the type and format of data is
limited.

As Jack said, a snapshot using Acrobat or some other screen capture app
is probably an easy option but a much better option is to either query
the Project database directly or by using a VBA macro. I have never
queried the database so I can only go by Jack's lead in believing it is
not a trivial process. I have however written many macros that export
Project data to Excel in any way shape or form using VBA.

So the bottom line for DME's manager is "yes" it can be done and it can
be done from either Excel or from Project.

Hope this clarifies.
John
Project MVP