I've been facing a huge amount of troubles while updating a program using excel import export. Even though errors were present I somehow managed to update the program with Actuals (Start/Finish/% Complete) to up to 95% accuracy. I'll list down the steps taken for reference.<?xml:namespace prefix = o />
A. Importing in progress activities
1. Export all the activities which are in-progress and not started to excel.
2. Vlookup the Actual % Complete and actual start date to the exported file.
3. Change the Activity status of all Not Started activities to in progress.
4. Delete all the other activities which does not have an update and having 100% complete.
5. Import the data to the p6 program and do random cross checking.
B. Importing Completed activities
1. Export all the activities which are in-progress and not started to excel.
2. Vlookup all the completed activitiess to a separate column in the export file for reference.
3. Using that reference, change status of all the activities having 100% complete as 'Completed'.
4. Import the file to program. (Now all your activities will be having the early start and finish as actual with status being completed)
5. In the same exported file, now vlook up the start and finish actuals and import the file again into p6. (Make sure your remove Zero values which are present in the updates due to vlookup.
C. Cross checking the updates
1. Copy the previous updated program and latest updated program to excel and do a variance check on the Actual Start/Finish/%Complete.
2. The values which are having +/- variances will have to be rectified manually. (For me it was around 40-60 activities which took hardly an hr. to rectify)
I had to update a program which was having around 1300 activities. I believe if I had to manual update the program it'd have taken at least 2 days. But by the above mentioned method, it took only half day to update 1000+ activities.
You will definitely come across a lot of errors and warning like est_wtg is null, A. remaining finish date cannot be earlier than remaining start date. But I didn’t notice any problem with the actual updates.
Please experiment and comment your suggestion, so that I can identify the further pros and cons of this method.