Janer said:
John,
(just to editorialize, I don't think anyone should participate in a
technical forum if they have a thin skin and no sense of humor)
Most of the folks here are using Excel to do a WBS. I have inherited one
from a mgr. For some reason I find it hard to read/absorb - I got so used to
Project, I guess. I want to track it in Project, and I'll need to add stuff
to it as the phases progress.
Once I add, for instance, rows 135-145 between the existing stuff, the Excel
doc is no longer up to date. I'll have to remember where I was adding rows,
and duplicate the adds to the existing Excel spreadsheet.
If I re-export to a brand new Excel file, the existing data and any notes
anyone was making is trash, as well as making it difficult for the folks to
tell what's new since they last looked.
Does that make sense? I was thinking if it was linked the new rows would
automagically show up.
Janer,
I don't think it so much a thin-skinned issue as much as it is a
end-of-my-rope frustration issue. I had one poor guy who posted on a
Sunday with a "hair on fire" type of crisis. I responded with some cold
hard truths and at that time his state of mind just wasn't receptive to
that kind of reality. So those of us on the "other end" of this
newsgroup do need to be properly sensitized. Anyway, I'm glad to see you
have a sense of humor, perhaps even in the face of utter destruction
You mention that your co-workers are doing a WBS in Excel. That is very
common - we did it at the company where I worked, the the Excel WBS was
only used to track financial information (e.g. budget, etc.). But a WBS
is not a schedule, and depending on what level of detail is shown,
adding tasks to a project file shouldn't necessarily impact the WBS as
shown on a spreadsheet - unless some people are trying to use the
spreadsheet as a schedule. Nonetheless it sounds like you need to go
both ways - import other people's WBS changes into your schedule and
export your schedule changes back to the WBS spreadsheet. Is that the
long and short of it?
Exporting Project's data back to Excel need not overwrite the existing
spreadsheet data. On the contrary, it should create a new
Workbook/worksheet each time. I'm not a big user of Excel, but I think
that's a good application for a pivot table in Excel and Project data
can be mapped back to an Excel pivot table. You might want to explore
that method, but I wouldn't use paste links - you are asking for trouble.
There's that "automagically" word again - man I love it - it has a
certain flair.
Of course, if I were doing what you are doing, I would probably use VBA
to pass information back and forth between Project and Excel. It is very
convenient, efficient and very little chance for error.
John
Project MVP
