Import a Microsoft Project file

A Microsoft Project schedule represents days or weeks of someone’s planning work. Re-keying it by hand into a new tool is the surest way to lose detail (the half-day dependency lag, the resource you forgot to add, the baseline you set in week one). Onplana’s importer reads the .mpp file directly so the plan, the costs, and the dependency graph land intact, and the few things that do not import cleanly (resources matched by email, zero-cost lines, calendar exceptions) are surfaced as warnings rather than silently dropped.

Uploading a Microsoft Project file to the import wizard, reviewing the preview of tasks and dates it will create, and finishing on the import summary

Supported formats

• .mpp (recommended). The native Microsoft Project binary. Just upload the file you already have, no export step. Microsoft Project 2003 and earlier are not supported.
• .xml (MSPDI). Project’s “Save as XML” format, useful when you only have an XML export.
• .mpx and .xer. Older interchange and Primavera formats.
• .pod and .gan. Plans saved in ProjectLibre or GanttProject. Many .pod files hold Microsoft Project XML inside, and those are read exactly like an .xml export. Any other .pod, and every .gan, is read by the same converter that reads .mpp files. Either way the tasks, dates, hierarchy, resources and dependencies come across.
• .xlsx and .csv. If your plan lives in a spreadsheet rather than Microsoft Project, upload it directly, see Import a WBS from Excel or CSV.

The upload size limit is 50 MB for the main importer, which covers every real-world project we have seen. If your file is larger, the size is usually a sign of embedded images or notes that are not part of the schedule; trimming those in Microsoft Project first is faster than chunking the import.

What comes across

1. Project: name, start and end dates, description.
2. Tasks: titles, start and due dates, percent complete (mapped to status and progress), and priority.
3. Duration, effort and actual work: a task’s Duration becomes its duration in Onplana. Its Estimated hours (the effort) is the Work of the people assigned to it, added up, so a five-day task with two people full time comes in as 80 hours, not 40. A task with no resource assignment imports with no effort, and material and cost resources are not counted. The actual work recorded in the file shows on the task form as Hours from the file, under Estimated hours: read-only, not counted as logged time, and it creates no timesheet entries. .mpp and Project XML files give the same figures.
4. The work breakdown structure: the full parent and child hierarchy is rebuilt as subtasks.
5. Milestones: preserved with their dates and shown as diamond markers on the Gantt chart.
6. Dependencies: all four link types (finish-to-start, start-to-start, finish-to-finish, start-to-finish) with their lag in days.
7. Resources: team members are matched to your organization by email. A task’s first resource becomes its assignee. A resource assigned at 0% units is passed over for that; when every resource on a task is at 0%, the task gets no assignee, and the import’s warnings say how many tasks that happened to. Every resource that is not the assignee becomes a collaborator when their address belongs to an active member of your workspace, who is added to the project first if they are not on it. Anyone who does not match is listed on the wizard’s Resources step, with how many tasks they hold, so you can invite them before the import commits; when they accept, they become the assignee or a collaborator on the tasks that named them. Microsoft Project often stores a resource as a name with no address at all, so that step lets you type one in. Nobody is created as a user without being invited, and the import does not notify the people it assigns or adds as collaborators.
8. Costs and custom fields: planned, fixed, and baseline costs, plus Project’s custom columns, come across where present.
9. Baseline: imported into a new project, the file’s baseline comes across as a baseline in Onplana, named after the file, so the Baseline tab and the Schedule Quality checks compare against it from day one. Adding the file to an existing project keeps each task’s baseline dates but creates no baseline.

Run the import

1. Open Import from the sidebar (or go to /migrate). The page opens on Bring your plans into Onplana, with Upload a file already selected under Where is your plan today?.
2. Drag your file onto the drop area, or click it to browse. The accepted formats are listed there, up to 50 MB, and Onplana detects the format automatically, you do not pick the type. The file then appears in a card with its name, kind and size: Choose another file swaps it, the remove button clears it, and Upload and review reads it.
3. On Field Mapping, check the fields Onplana found in your file. Each one shows an example from the file and how many tasks carry it. Switch off anything you would rather leave behind; the project name and dates always come across.
4. On Preview, check the plan as it will land: the task tree, milestones, dates, and who each task is assigned to. Anything worth a second look, such as tasks with no dates, is listed at the top, and Needs a look narrows the table to those tasks. Nothing is saved until you start the import.
5. Confirm the resource matching step: matched people join the project, unmatched names are flagged.
6. Review the summary and create the project.

Beside the upload, What comes across lists what an import carries and what it leaves behind, and Which file should I use? opens to explain each format. The sidebar shows Import to Portfolio Managers and above; other members can go to /migrate directly.

Tip

After the import, open the new project’s Gantt chart to confirm the timeline and dependency arrows look right. The History tab of the Import page keeps a record of every import, including any warnings, so you can see exactly what was matched and what was skipped.

Planning a wider move off Microsoft Project? The migration overview on the main site covers timelines, what carries over, and how Onplana pricing compares.

After the import: the Import Cleanup tab

Every imported project gains an Import Cleanup tab (in the project’s Settings section, marked with a sparkle icon) with AI-suggested fixes for the things the importer could not resolve on its own, such as resources it couldn’t match or fields that didn’t map. Work through the suggestions at your own pace. On a clean import there is simply nothing listed. The tab stays on the project after the import rather than disappearing, so you can come back to the suggestions later. The warnings banner shown right after import also links straight to this tab, so you don’t have to go looking for it.

Best practices

1. Bring your team in from the Resources step, not beforehand. Onplana matches MS Project resources to Onplana users by email, and the wizard’s Resources step lists everyone it could not match, busiest first. Tick the ones you want invited. Where Project stored only a name, which is the common case for a file that was never attached to an enterprise resource pool, type their address on that row. Their tasks are assigned the moment they accept, so there is no re-matching by hand afterwards and no need to invite the whole team first.

   If you would rather not decide during the import, skip the step: the imported project’s banner reopens the same list, and you can invite from there whenever you are ready. See Bring your team into an imported plan.

2. Pre-save the file in modern MS Project format. Project 2003 and earlier binaries are not supported. If you’re not sure, open the file in any modern Microsoft Project (2007+) and Save As to bump the version. The same trick fixes files exported from ancient Project Server installations.

3. Check the baseline that came with the file. Imported into a new project, a file with a baseline arrives with one, so every change after the move shows against the plan as it was last baselined in Microsoft Project. If the file had none, or you added it to an existing project, take a baseline as soon as the plan looks right. The earlier you do this, the more useful the variance reports get.

4. Plan a portfolio migration as half a day per ten projects. Single-project imports take five minutes once you’re warmed up. Portfolio migrations slow down on three things: resource re-matching across projects, custom-field naming consistency, and cross-project dependencies. Each file’s links import within its own project; links between two files have to be recreated after the import. Onplana schedules those, but the dependency picker offers the current project only, so they are made through an AI agent or the API, or by moving a task that already carries them.

Troubleshooting / common pitfalls

• “Hanger” tasks in the imported Gantt (no predecessor, no successor, in the middle of the schedule). Usually means MS Project carried an implicit dependency that didn’t make it into the file. Add the link in Onplana; the Gantt is the fastest surface for spotting these because the bar sits at an unexpected date.
• Negative-lag dependencies look wrong. MS Project sometimes stores lead time as a negative lag value. Onplana imports the number as-is. If a successor seems to start “too early,” check the dependency lag in days; a 2-day lead is -2, not the duration of the predecessor.
• My costs did not import. MS Project treats a zero cost as “no cost configured” rather than “$0 confirmed”, so zero-cost lines come across as empty. If you genuinely want $0 to mean $0, set the cost in MS Project to a small marker value (e.g. $0.01) before importing, or set it post-import.
• Resources show as duplicates. Two causes: (a) the email in MS Project doesn’t match the Onplana email (case-sensitive matching on the local part); (b) the resource is a generic role name (“Engineer 1”) rather than a person. The matching screen lets you either link to an existing Onplana member or skip the resource entirely; pick skip for generic roles.
• The import says “size exceeded”. Strip embedded images, large task notes, and old Project history before retrying. Most “huge” .mpp files shrink dramatically after a Project clean-up.
• The file could not be imported. The wizard names the file and says why. It can also offer Send us this file, which sends that file to Onplana support to find the cause; see Send us a schedule file that will not open.

How this combines with other features

• Import + Baselines. A new project imported from a file with a baseline starts with that baseline, so every later change shows on the Gantt against the plan as Microsoft Project last baselined it, which is the cleanest way to see scope drift after the migration. If the file had no baseline, capture one the moment the import completes.
• Import + Rate cards. Configure Rate cards before the team starts logging time against the imported project, so the cost side of earned-value math reconciles with MS Project’s planned cost from day one.
• Import + custom fields. MS Project’s ExtendedAttributes import as per-project custom fields, not org-wide. If a field matters across every project, promote it to org-wide after the first import (see Scope custom fields to one project).
• Lookup lists survive an XML export, not yet a binary one. A field backed by a value list arrives as a Dropdown carrying that list as its options when you import MSPDI XML, and as plain text when you import the .mpp binary, because the binary parser does not read value lists yet. If keeping your pick lists matters, export the plan as XML from MS Project rather than uploading the .mpp. Everything else imports the same either way.

Coming from another tool

Tool	Path into Onplana
Microsoft Project (.mpp, .mpx, .xml MSPDI)	Direct import here
Project Server	Export each project to .mpp or Project XML and import it here
Primavera P6 (.xer)	Direct import here
ProjectLibre (.pod) and GanttProject (.gan)	Direct import here
MS Planner	Connect your Microsoft account from the import wizard and choose Microsoft Planner as the source. It pulls the plan directly, with an optional link that updates it from Planner every night; AI Kickstart is still a fast option for tiny boards
Smartsheet	Export to Excel or CSV and upload it directly, see Import a WBS from Excel or CSV

FAQs

Will importing change my original Microsoft Project file? No. The upload is read only; your .mpp file is untouched. Onplana creates a brand new project from a copy of the data.

Why are some of my team listed as warnings instead of added? Resources are matched by email address. If someone’s email in Microsoft Project does not match their Onplana account, they are flagged so you can add them by hand rather than creating a duplicate person.

My costs did not import. Why? Microsoft Project treats a zero cost as “no cost configured”, so blank and zero-cost lines come across as empty. Lines with a real cost value import into the project’s planned cost.

Do I need a paid plan to import? No, import works on every plan, and the Gantt chart that renders the result is on every plan too. Some of what comes across (custom fields, for example) is only visible on the plans that include those features, but the underlying data is always imported.

Can I import the same file twice (e.g. after I fix something in MS Project)? Re-importing does not update the tasks you already have, it adds a fresh copy. The cleanest pattern is: import, adjust, baseline. If you re-import to pick up upstream changes, either delete the previous attempt first or treat the new import as the canonical one and archive the earlier one.

Can I import a file into a project I already have? Yes. On the last step of the wizard, choose An existing project and pick it. The tasks are added to that project instead of creating a second one, and each task is tagged with the file it came from. This is how you combine several contractor files into one plan, so the dependencies between them actually schedule, see Combine several schedule files into one project.

What if my MS Project file is on SharePoint or Project Server? Download it to your machine first, then upload. Onplana’s importer needs the file on your device; it does not read from SharePoint or Project Server directly.

Related

• Migrating from Microsoft Project, the full hub: import, baselines, dependencies, rate cards
• Combine several schedule files into one project, when the plan arrives as one file per contractor
• Capture and compare baselines, where the file’s baseline lands, and how to capture another