Microsoft Project Online General Tips and Tricks – Importing Projects to Project Online

Do you have a project file that you need to share with others and collaborate on?

Now that you’ve connected your projects, you might want to import an offline project schedule to Project Online. Thankfully Microsoft Project has a helpful import wizard! Follow these steps to make sure your project is properly imported by matching offline resources and custom fields to enterprise versions.

Open the project you want to import in Project desktop then click File > Save As > click “Use Import Wizard”.

This will open up the wizard on the left side of your schedule. Then follow the six steps in the wizard:

Step 1- Map local resources to enterprise resources.

This step is to make sure the resources you have in your current project match existing enterprise resources and that they are connected online. If your resources not automatically mapping correctly (not matching) you can easily use drop down menu to fix manually.

Step 2 – Import Resources

If there are errors, they will show up here and you can fix them manually.

An aside about custom fields:

Custom fields are used to provide additional metadata about tasks.

Step 3 – Map Task Custom Fields

Match like field to like field.

Step 4- Confirm Tasks

If there are any errors this is your opportunity to fix them.

Step 5 – Complete Import

Click save.

Once you click save, this box will pop-up. You can view your custom fields and other aspects of the project. Check that everything is correct before clicking save.

An aside about the difference between save and publish:

I. Save is your version, only the project owner can see.

II. Publish will also save it and allow everyone to see through the online web experience.

6.- Publish

To make sure the project is available in the Project Online, make sure to publish it. When publishing you can also create a SharePoint site for the project.

By connecting the desktop version to Project Online, you can now see if there are conflicts between project allocation and resource availability. You can easily reschedule resources to when they are available by right clicking on the icon and either fixing in Task Inspector or clicking Reschedule to Available Date.