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Primavera P6 Gantt Charts using OnePager

How to create Gantt charts from project plans in Primavera P6

If you manage project schedules in Primavera P6, you know that it's not always easy to create a clean Gantt chart or project timeline. OnePager can take your project plans from P6 and make great visuals in a matter of minutes.

Primavera P6 Gantt Chart

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OnePager imports your Primavera P6 schedules to create full-color, Powerpoint-ready Gantt charts and project timelines in a matter of minutes. If you don’t already have OnePager, you can download a 15-day free trial to see how it works.

Get started by following one of our two sets of instructions below:

1. Direct import of Primavera P6 data (XML/XER format)
2. Import of Primavera P6 data through Excel

Direct Method

OnePager has the ability to directly import data from Primavera P6 in either XML or XER format. Here's how:

  1. Open your Primavera P6 project schedules. In the example below, we'll use both "Project A" and "Project B" to build our Gantt chart:

    Oracle Primavera P6 project plan, complete with the standard Gantt chart view.

  2. If you want to pre-select certain P6 activities, you can add a user defined field called OnePager and place a Yes next to any activities that you want to appear in your Gantt chart:

    Primavera P6 user defined field indicates which activities should be included in the 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.

  3. In Primavera P6, go to File > Export and choose either an XML or an XER format:

    Export from Primavera P6 into an XML or XER format.

  4. Make sure that both projects are selected, and then finish the export process:

    Export multiple Primavera P6 projects to XML or XER format.

    When exporting multiple projects from Primavera P6 to XML, if you leave the Export all project level layouts box checked, it will place your XML file into a ZIP file. OnePager can open this ZIP file, but if you prefer to export a raw XML file instead of a ZIP file, uncheck the box before exporting.

  5. Next, go to your desktop or Windows Start menu, and launch OnePager:

    Launch OnePager from your desktop.

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

    OnePager start screen.

  7. When the import wizard appears, choose Select > BROWSE Primavera P6 Files:

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

  8. After selecting your Primavera P6 project, give your Gantt chart a name. If you set up a user defined field to filter your activities like we did with the OnePager field, choose that as your filter option. Then, click Create New Chart.

    Import a Primavera P6 XML or XER file into OnePager.

  9. OnePager will import your Primavera P6 XML or XER file, and create a Gantt chart that summarizes all projects:

    Primavera schedule: A Gantt chart for PowerPoint created in OnePager Express based on a project plan from Oracle Primavera P6.

    Once you have created your chart, you can adjust colors, swimlanes, and layouts, all based on the data that you already have in your Primavera P6 projects. No manual editing is needed.

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Excel Method

You can also export your Primavera P6 plan to Excel before importing into OnePager. Here's how:

  1. Open your Primavera P6 project schedules. In the example below, we'll use both "Project A" and "Project B" to build our Gantt chart:
    Oracle Primavera P6 project plan, complete with the standard Gantt chart view.
  2. Export each of your Primavera P6 project schedules to Excel. This will allow you to import it into OnePager Express in just a minute:
    Export from Primavera P6 into an Excel format.
  3. When you export from Primavera P6 to Excel, you have a lot of options. OnePager Express is flexible and can work with as much or as little schedule information as you'd like. For starters, we recommend exporting "Activity ID," "Activity Name," "Start" and "Finish," but in the example below, you'll see that you can export more schedule information if you want to include it in your OnePager Express Gantt chart.
    Set an export template to pull relevant columns from your Primavera P6 project into your Gantt chart.

    In this case, we created a "OnePager" template to use with future Primavera P6 exports.

  4. Once you've completed your export to Excel, you will have a spreadsheet for each project schedule. They should look something like this:
    Excel export from Oracle Primavera P6.

    Primavera P6 recommends deleting the second row from the spreadsheet, so we'll do that for each of our two project schedules.

  5. Next, double-click the OnePager Express icon on your desktop. From the Start screen that pops up, choose New. Choose your two Excel spreadsheets as the source files for your Gantt chart:
    The redesigned OnePager Express import wizard makes it easy to take a Primavera P6 project and build a full-color Gantt chart.

    Click Next to continue.

  6. The next page of the wizard will let you choose which fields from Primavera P6 you would like to use in your Gantt chart:
    Map your Primavera P6 columns into OnePager Express to create a data-driven Gantt chart.
  7. Finally, click the Create new Chart button, and OnePager Express will create a dynamic project report based on the data you exported from Primavera P6:
    Primavera schedule: A Gantt chart for PowerPoint created in OnePager Express based on a project plan from Oracle Primavera P6.

    From here, you can copy and paste your Gantt chart into PowerPoint, or make edits to the layout of your report. You can also update your report to reflect changes that take place in your Primavera P6 project over time.

OnePager is the easiest way to summarize or present a Primavera P6 project. Because OnePager is a data-driven application, there are endless possibilities as to the types of charts and reports you can create from your Primavera P6 project plan.

Get started today by downloading a free trial.

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