Excel to Proj Mapping -> Can't get col of data to map to Proj - Why?

bborman120,

Your first mistake was assuming it would be "intuitively easy", nothing about importing data from Excel to Project using an import map is intuitive or easy.

To answer your first question, are you using Project Online or Project Web App? If not (i.e. you are using a stand alone version of Project), then the Assignment Owner field is not available.

The main reason it is challenging to import Excel data into Project is that Excel is an "open-format" spreadsheet. In Excel cell data can be whatever you want it to be whereas in Project, fields are very strictly defined and there are separate and independent fields with the same name that are properties of tasks, resources, and assignments (e.g. task Text1 is not the same as Resource Text1 or Assignment Text1). This means that even though you can represent several pieces of information about a task on a single row or column in Excel, you may need to break that data into multiple field maps for Project (i.e. task data, resource data and assignment data).

Also be aware that the Predecessor field in Project is directly dependent on how the dependencies between tasks is set up and will normally not follow the row number that task occupies on the Excel spreadsheet.

I'm sure there are articles written about using import maps but I don't have any ready reference. I find the most reliable way to get data from Excel to Project (and vice versa) is through VBA.

John