Project Plan Viewer (Microsoft Project XML & Primavera XER)

About the Project Plan Viewer (Microsoft Project XML & Primavera XER)

Open a project plan on any computer, with no planning software installed: a Microsoft Project XML file (the XML file Microsoft Project saves, and many other planners write) or a Primavera P6 XER export. The plan is read in this browser and shown as a Gantt chart — summary bars for phases, task bars with their progress, diamonds for milestones, the links between tasks, the critical path in red, the baseline (Primavera: the planned dates) as grey bars and the status date as a dashed line — and as a task table with WBS codes or Activity IDs, durations, start and finish, % complete, predecessors, resources, slack and actual dates.

Collapse and expand phases, zoom from days to quarters, show only the critical tasks, the milestones, the unfinished work or what finishes later than planned, search by name, ID or resource, and select a task to see all of it: its dates, its links in both directions, its resources, constraint and notes. A file with several Primavera projects lets you choose one.

Opening and viewing a plan needs no pass. With a Pro pass you can download the task list as Excel or CSV, the chart as a PDF (A4, A3, Letter or Tabloid, with the columns and timescale you choose) and the plan as Microsoft Project XML — which turns a Primavera schedule into a file Microsoft Project opens; without a pass the page shows a free preview of what the downloads hold. Microsoft Project's own .mpp files open here once saved as XML in Project.

Common uses

• Looking at a plan a contractor or client sent, without a Microsoft Project or Primavera licence.
• Checking the critical path and what slipped against the baseline before a progress meeting.
• Turning a Primavera schedule into Microsoft Project XML, or a plan into a spreadsheet for a report.
• Printing a Gantt chart of only the critical tasks or of one phase.

What the viewer reads

• Microsoft Project XML (the Project XML Data Interchange format): tasks with their outline, WBS codes, start and finish, durations as Project writes them (days, hours, weeks, elapsed and estimated durations), % complete, actual dates, total slack, the critical flag, constraints, notes, baseline 0, the four link types with leads and lags, resources and their assignments (with units), the project calendar’s working week and the status date.
• Primavera P6 XER: each project of the file with its WBS as summary rows, the activities with their Activity IDs, planned, early, remaining and actual dates, original durations, total float, the percent complete each activity’s type calls for (duration, physical or units), the critical rule of the project (total float at or under its limit, or the longest path), the relationships with their lags, resources and calendars’ working weeks.
• The dates are shown as the file holds them: nothing is scheduled again, so the chart is the plan its owner saved.

The downloads

With a Pro pass: - Excel: the task list with real dates and numbers, plus Links, Resources and Plan sheets. - CSV: the task list, with dates written as year-month-day and time (yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm), so any spreadsheet reads them. - PDF: the Gantt chart in vector form across as many pages as the rows need, with the columns ticked under “Chart and columns”, a legend and page numbers; the timescale fits the page or is the one you pick. - Microsoft Project XML: the whole plan, with its outline, links, resources, assignments and baseline (from Primavera: the planned dates), on one standard calendar of the plan’s working week and hours a day. A not-started activity of a Primavera schedule that has no predecessors keeps its start as a “start no earlier than” constraint, so Microsoft Project opens it on the same date.

Tick “only the rows shown now” to download what the filter, search and collapsed phases show.

Sources

• Microsoft: Project XML Data Interchange Schema reference
• Oracle: P6 EPPM XER Import/Export Data Map Guide (Project)

Limitations

• Microsoft Project .mpp files are not read: save them as XML from Microsoft Project first. Primavera P6 XML, MPX, GanttProject and other formats are not read either.
• Holidays and the calendars of single tasks or resources are not drawn: the chart shades the weekend of the project’s working week only. The Microsoft Project XML download carries one standard calendar.
• Links to tasks of other projects are left out, and so are timephased data, custom fields and costs.
• Files up to 50 MB; the page draws up to 3,000 rows at a time (collapse phases or filter for the rest), and the downloads hold every task.
• MySmartCoPilot is not affiliated with or endorsed by Microsoft or Oracle; Microsoft Project and Primavera P6 are named only to say which files the viewer reads.

Privacy

On this device; its files download once

Your plan is read in this browser and is not uploaded or kept: closing the page forgets it. Only your view settings (zoom, columns, paper) are remembered on this device.