Primavera P6's Activity Layouts can be a super-feature for helping you to plan, analyze, and progress a schedule. But what about exporting Activity Layouts to other copies of Primavera P6? In this post I'll show you how to import and export those precious Primavera P6 Activity Layouts. The Activity screen is where we spend 95% of our time as Primavera P6 users. Having a facility to configure
The Best Primavera P6 Tutorials & Articles
Browse all of our Primavera P6 Professional tutorials and articles here. Whether you're a beginner or a seasoned pro with Primavera P6 Professional, we've got helpful and informative articles that are perfect for you.
Use Primavera P6 Reflections To Merge Scenario Projects
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Reflection projects are a little-known but very handy feature in Primavera P6 Professional. A Primavera P6 Reflection project is essentially a copy of a project but with one snazzy built-in trick - the ability to merge the copied project back into the original at any time. If the genius of this trick hasn't struck you yet, it will. This merging ability was designed to help planners work with
Open Zipped XER files in Primavera P6 v18 – New Feature
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As of Primavera P6 version 18, you can now import zipped XER files directly into Primavera P6. There's no need to uncompress them first. Primavera P6 will read the zip archive directly. Check out our zipped xer files video tutorial to see firsthand how it all works....and also what doesn't
Color Coding Your Primavera P6 Gantt Chart: 2 Ways To Do It
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A picture says a thousand words. And a good color-coding system can do the same on the Primavera P6 Gantt Chart. Did you know you don't need to stick with Primavera P6's default Gantt Chart color scheme? The options are many and in this video tutorial, you'll learn how to color-code bars based on criteria YOU set. You'll learn about 2 ways to set the criteria using Activity Codes or by User
How to Export Primavera P6 Data and Create Interactive Visuals in Excel
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Do you spend a lot of time doing repetitive tasks in Excel? Around two years ago, I realized that although my role as a project planner was based on my skills in Primavera P6, I was spending a significant amount of my day doing repetitive work in Excel. I would update my project schedules in P6 and then spend hours getting all the reports ready. All this changed when I came across Excel’s
Install 2 Versions of Primavera P6 On the Same PC – NEW In Version 18
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I used to think installing 2 different versions of Primavera P6 Professional on the same PC was impossible. Well, impossible OR really, really difficult. I used to have a complicated VirtualBox setup with a huge virtual machine that would crawl along with delayed mouse movements just so I could run an older version of Primavera P6 on my PC. Of course, I would install the latest version
How To Do Rolling Wave Planning in Primavera P6
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One of the biggest challenges with building project schedules is that often you don't know the details of a piece of work but you need it on your schedule regardless. Yes, you know you need to say remediate an area once you've installed the watermain underground. But early in the project, the finer details of what that remediation might look like are scarce. Enter Rolling Wave
How To Find Relationship Lag in Primavera P6
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It's not very easy to find Relationship Lag in Primavera P6 project schedules. There aren't really any features to highlight which relationships have lag or lead time. But understanding how leads or lags are used on your Primavera P6 project is a vital part of analyzing a project schedule. We need a process to find relationship lag in Primavera P6 schedule. And I'm going to show you
How to Trace Out of Sequence Activities in Primavera P6 Professional
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Ever had a situation where all predecessors of an activity are 100% complete but the activity’s Start date isn't pushed to the Data Date as expected? Similarly, you might also see the activity's Finish date is much later than the it's remaining duration from Data Date? If you answered yes then this quick tip might help you trace the offending activity cause these problems. THE PROBLEM To
Thou Shalt Not Group by WBS Alone – Try Grouping By P6 Activity Codes
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On most projects, the structure of Schedule and Cost performance reporting is based on the Project WBS and the reason for this is not farfetched since WBS is a deliverables-driven hierarchical structure. Planning tools such as Primavera P6 have a feature that enables Schedulers and Planners to replicate the Project WBS and this is why activities in a schedule are predominantly grouped by
How To Create a Predecessors Report in Primavera P6
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Usually on Projects, Primavera P6 Gantt chart schedules are presented to stakeholders as pdf files due to the obvious formatting advantage that pdf offers. Unfortunately, when reviewing these Gantt charts in pdf format, there is very little information available about the logic relationships between activities in the schedule. This tutorial presents steps to follow to create an Activity
Hack A Primavera P6 Change Log from Activity Steps
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One of the most often requested features for Primavera P6 is an Activity Change Log. Although a log of changes to your project's activities is not yet native to the software, you can hack yourself a Primavera P6 Change Log using a few simple steps. I want to first give full credit for this solution to Ronald Weaver, a master scheduler at KBR Australia who brought it to us. It's innovative
How To Remove Actuals From A Primavera P6 Schedule
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Though not a widely recommended practice, there are times when one might want to de-progress or remove actuals from a Primavera P6 schedule. Some reasons for wanting to return a schedule after weeks or months of progress updates to its state at Project Start are: Baseline not being set before applying actuals Wrong or no resource assignments applied when baseline was set Wrong logic
Use Expected Finish in Primavera P6 to Speed Updates
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I'd love to see some stats on the average size of a Primavera P6 schedule. I've never come across any stats, but based on experience and lots of consulting and web-research, it's pretty clear that today's project schedules are the chunky big brother to their slim and compact sibling of 10 or 15 years ago. Schedules are becoming bloated with data. Why? We have computers & software that
Compress A Schedule Using Duration Types in Primavera P6
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Since we've been discussing schedule compression and project acceleration techniques of late in preparation for next week's webinar on Construction Project Acceleration, I wanted to share a quick Primavera P6 technique that is often applied when compressing a schedule. When I run classroom training courses on Primavera P6, one thing I like to do is a group brainstorm on ways to get a project
What is a .PLF File And How Do I Open It in Primavera P6?
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A .plf file is a Primavera Layout File that stores information about screen layouts. If you're having trouble opening a .plf file, let me show you how it's done using Primavera P6. Opening A PLF File In Primavera P6 A .plf file can't be double-clicked in your file browser in order to open it in P6. Double-clicking it doesn't work, and typically Windows will try to open it in some unrelated
Who Changed My Primavera P6 Schedule?
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Do you work in an enterprise environment where so many people have access to the same Primavera P6 database? Have you ever wanted to find out who made changes to your Primavera P6 schedule without leaving any comments in a Primavera P6 Notebook? Here is quick tip to help you track users who made changes to your Primavera P6 schedule. Add the 4 new fields (columns) to your layout by
Plan a Festive Holiday Wreath in Primavera P6
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Back by popular demand is another festorial in Primavera P6. Who says the lowly Gantt Charts can't be fun & festive? In the spirits of the holidays (and of using Project Management software in ways never intended), I'd like to present you with an Advanced-level Festorial on creating a holiday wreath. Show off your skills, impress your project controls manager (or your planners) and make
The One Indicator That Can Foil Your Excel Import into Primavera P6
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There is the temptation to think that because you can export a data field from Primavera P6 to Excel that you can import the same data field back to Primavera P6 after manipulating the field’s data in Excel. If you have ever imported data into Primavera P6 using Excel, you would have experienced instances where despite getting the familiar message of a successful import, some of the changes you
How to Print a Calendar from Primavera P6, with some help
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In this quick tutorial we show how to create a 12-month formatted calendar in Excel based on the data extracted from an xer file using the handy Xer-Reader utility. Hopefully I will soon provide a more technical explanation on how the code works in the xer reader wiki. Michael has written an excellent article about calendars go and read it. 1) Get a Copy of the Xer-Reader Utility If you
Import an XER File From a Newer Version of Primavera P6
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To import a newer version XER file to an older version of Oracle Primavera P6 installed on your computer, follow this quick fix. 1) Open the XER file in any text editor like Windows Notepad. 2) On the very first line, you should see the version of Oracle Primavera P6 that this XER file was saved in. Edit the version in the file to match the version installed on your machine. You can check
The Biggest Problem with Primavera P6 Calendars, And How You Can Fix It
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As planners and schedulers, we are tasked with managing mountains of project data everyday; progress updates, scenario projects, reports, reports and more reports. Data can quickly take over your life if you're not careful. And you don't have time for that. That's why a good system for organizing aspects of your project and project data goes a long way. My biggest frustration with Primavera
Create A Festive Gantt Chart Xmas Tree In Primavera P6
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For all you creative types out there who love to create something awesome in a manner which is rather non-traditional....this tutorial is for you. In the spirit of the holidays, here are the steps to create a festive Gantt chart Xmas tree in Primavera P6, complete with decorations. Getting Started with the Gantt Xmas Tree's Structure 1. Create a new, empty Project plan and name it "Gantt Xmas
How to Show the Critical Path in P6
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Can't find your Critical Path in Primavera P6? Don't worry, it might be hiding. Here are 4 easy ways you can laser-in on your project's Critical Path in P6. 4 Easy Ways to Show the Critical Path in P6 1. Check the Gantt Chart By default, the P6 Gantt chart will show your project's Critical Path activities in bright red. This makes it easy to have a quick glance at the Gantt Chart et voila!,
Critical Path vs Longest Path
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When it comes to your project's Critical Path, there are few topics more important to your client. The expectation is that YOU, dear scheduler, are the expert. So YOU had better know your project's Critical Path inside and out. But wait! ......Is it the Critical Path you should be reporting on, or the Longest Path? The terms Critical Path and Longest Path are often used interchangeably when
How can I force an activity onto my project’s Critical Path?
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Last week, I taught a Primavera P6 training course to some great folks in frosty Fort McMurray. As often happens, an interesting question came up about Critical Path. And this is not the first time this question has been put to me. But this time, I thought I would write about it. "How do I put an activity on my project's Critical Path in Primavera P6?" So here's the situation. A project
Here’s A Quick Way To Keep Your Milestones in Focus in Primavera P6
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Milestone Activities in any schedule usually represent the most important deadlines, deliveries, start ups or drop-dead dates for a project. These are undeniably dates that you’ll want to stay on top of and keep close at hand in case you’re asked for a report or to check on the health of the project. But it can be difficult to search for milestones in a large schedule, and at the least it may take
Handling Out of Sequence Progress in an Updated P6 Schedule
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What is Out of Sequence Progress in Primavera P6? Out of Sequence Progress occurs from a deviation in the original planned logic that was set up in the baseline schedule. It can occur when work is executed in the field in a different order than was planned in the schedule. The result can affect your project's logic, which dictates the order of execution of activities. Checking for Out of
Graphing a P6 Resource S-Curve in Excel
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In my previous tutorial in this series, I described the procedure to export resource assignment data from P6 to Excel. Most of us have worked with Excel charts in our job or during our study in college or university. What we all know is that they are really helpful when you want to demonstrate some analytical information without technical terms. In this tutorial, I am going to tell you how to
One Trick to Export P6 Resource Assignment Data to Excel
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As you know Primavera P6 has a lack of graphical features so often we schedulers need to export everything to other software packages (mostly Excel) to produce an understandable schedule and graphs. I always had a problem when I export P6 resource assigment data to Excel with the standard exporting feature on P6 until I found a way to leverage the Reports feature. Here you can use the current
How Primavera Calendars Change Durations – and what to do about it
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If you do a quick google on keywords <Primavera calendars change>, you'll end up with quite a few results that show you how to use Primavera's Fill-Down feature to change the activity calendar of all the activities in a project. But I think the fill-down piece is only the first step in changing activity calendars. What about durations? Changing an activity's calendar in Primavera can
How to clean a Primavera P6 XER file using the XER File Parser
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In the third part of our Primavera P6 databases and data cleansing series, we will show how to use the parser to clean an xer file. But if you haven't read them go back and read: XER File Parser Excel utility Part 1: 6 Ways to Clean Up Your Primavera Database Nightmare Part 2: Understanding Primavera XER Files Cleaning an XER File for Import NOTICE: the Primavera XER File Parser is not
