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Gantt Chart from Primavera P6 with Conditional Formatting

Build a Gantt Chart with conditional formatting using Primavera P6 data

If you use Primavera P6 to manage your projects, OnePager can import your P6 schedule and apply conditional formatting to make your project easier to understand.

Conditional formatting applied to a timeline based on a Primavera P6 project 15-Day
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OnePager is project timeline and Gantt chart software that can import schedules from Primavera P6. Once you have imported your Primavera P6 plan into OnePager, you can change layouts, colors, swimlanes, and more. If you don't already use OnePager, you can download a 15-day trial and follow along with the instructions below to see how it works:

  1. Start with your Primavera P6 schedule. OnePager lets you select specific activities from Primavera P6 to include in your Gantt chart by adding a Y/N user-defined field to your Primavera P6 project:

    User-defined field in Primavera P6 with Yes/No values determines which activities are imported into your OnePager Gantt chart.

    To add a user-defined field to Primavera P6, go to Enterprise > User Defined Fields and click the Add button to add a new user-defined field called OnePager.

  2. With your activities selected, we want to export our Primavera P6 project to either XML or XER format so that OnePager can import it. To do this, go to File > Export select either Primavera P6 XML or Primavera PM XER, then click Next and follow the remaining steps in the Primavera P6 export wizard:

    Export from Primavera P6 into XML or XER format.

  3. Once your Primavera P6 file is ready, go to your desktop or Windows Start menu, and launch OnePager:

    Launch OnePager from your desktop.

  4. When the OnePager start screen appears, click on New to start building a new Gantt chart from Primavera P6:

    OnePager start screen.

  5. On the import wizard, choose Select > BROWSE Primavera P6 Files:

    Browse Primavera P6 XML or XER projects for import into OnePager.

  6. After selecting your Primavera P6 project, you'll have the option to give your Gantt chart a name. Also notice that OnePager will plan to filter your Primavera P6 project and only bring in activity where the OnePager user-defined field has a "Y" in it. Click Create New Chart.

    Filter Primavera P6 activities before importing into OnePager to make a Gantt chart.

  7. OnePager will import your Primavera P6 project into an initial version of your OnePager Gantt Chart that looks like this:

    OnePager Gantt chart, created from a Primavera P6 XML file

Adding Conditional Formatting

Once you have created a Gantt chart or timeline in OnePager from Primavera P6, you can use OnePager's conditional formatting to assign colors and shapes assigned to each activity in your chart. Conditional formatting will work with any Primavera P6 field, including user defined fields. In this example, we'll set up conditional formatting rules that look at the Activity Status field.

  1. In OnePager, go to Home > Chart Properties > Task Bars, and click on the Manage Rules button to set up conditional formatting:

    Launch OnePager's conditional formatting rules engine to apply different colors and shapes to Primavera P6 data.

  2. Here, we can set up a few conditional formatting rules that assign different colors and task shapes for each of the different statuses in Primavera P6:

    Conditional formatting can assign different colors and shapes based on status values from Primavera P6.

  3. Click OK twice, and OnePager will apply your conditional formatting rules and update your timeline to reflect the status of each task in Primavera P6:

    Conditional formatting on a Gantt Chart based on activity status information imported from Primavera P6.

    Notice that each different status assigned in Primavera P6 has a unique color and shape. We've also turned on a legend (View > Legend) to help readers understand the meaning of each color and shape.

OnePager gives you a fast and accurate way to create great looking, data-driven timelines and Gantt charts from Primavera P6. Try it with your own Primavera P6 schedule today by downloading a free trial.

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