Importing Activity Codes into P6 using an XER file and Excel
The Primavera P6 Excel spreadsheet created when you export a P6 project does not allow the creation of Activity Codes and their description on import. These have to exist before import.
Since Oracle Primavera stopped supporting the Excel spreadsheet that allowed the importing of Activity Codes using the SDK it has become more difficult to import a large number of activities into P6 with their Activity Codes, because the Codes have to exist in P6 before importing the activities.
The process outlined in this paper shows how you may simply edit an XER with Excel and import the Activity Codes.
Please note that if you are not careful, this is a very quick way of corrupting your database.
This paper is an extract from 99 Tricks and Traps for Oracle Primavera P6 PPM Professional, The Casual User’s “Survival Guide” by Paul Harris available through www.eh.com.au.
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Importing Activity Codes into P6 using an XER file and Excel
To import a large number of Activity Codes that exist in Excel or a text document, you may edit a XER file using Excel:
- Create a P6 Project;
- Add an activity so there is activity data to export;
- Create a Project Activity Code in the Activity Code Definition form;
- Create one Activity Code Value and Activity Code Description;
- Export the project as an XER file;
- Change the XER file extension to *.txt;
- Open the renamed *.xer file with Excel;
- You should be asked to Data Parse the file and accept the defaults;
- Find the ACTVCODE area;
- Insert the rows into the spreadsheet for the Activity Code Values and Activity Code Descriptions;
- Add the new data by copy and paste;
- Increment the actv_code_id, actv_code_name and short_name fields but do not increment the actv_code field;
- Do not forget to fill down the seq_num and color, not shown in the picture above;
- Save Excel worksheet;
- Change the file extension *.XER;
- Import the XER file into Primavera P6
NOTE: If you are not careful, this is a very quick way of corrupting your database.
If you want to learn more about Planning and Control with Microsoft Project, please check out my online course here.
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