End Date incorrect when importing from CSV

GanttProject Desktop Support
1

Hello,

when importing from CSV the enddate is not loaded correcly.

– date format is set to dd/MM/yyyy
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This is my csv excerpt:
IMPORT_part.csv (1.3 KB)

… and this is what i get:

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image1328×1042 382 KB

— note that most end dates are not as they are in the CSV…
— the log is not complaining about date errors, however something about the predecessor entries… i have none of those in the csv (The csv is an extract of a PM tool)

Please advise how can i import the csv so the end dates are correct.
Thanks in advance, let me know if you need some more info.
simon

2

Thanks for reporting!
When task durations are not specified in CSV (which is the case), we calculate duration as a mere difference between end and start date, as if there were no weekends/holidays in a project where CSV was exported from. However, if there are weekend days in the target project, then end dates change appropriately. This is certainly not the bestUX, but that’s the way it works now.

If you import into a project with no weekend days, you will get a project which is close to what is written in your CSV file. However, even after that there is a strange glitch with a couple of tasks which start on Feb 3 instead of Feb 1. I will look more carefully what’s wrong with them.

3

Thanks Dmitry…

Ideally i would not want to update the DUration field, as i don’t have it as part of the original data extract i use for creating the CSV (as a workaround i could use excel first, create a cell formula, get the numbers, then extract that into CSV… an extra step)

Is that maybe a good idea to not change the EndDate field, but leave as is, if there is nothing in the CSV for it? Would this be something you’d consider to implement?

THanks and best regards
simon

4

Internally we use start date and duration, and the end date depends on the calendar. We can try calculating the duration not as a mer edifference in days, but taking into account the target project calendar – that what makes most sense in my opinion. If you’re aware of the calendar which was used in the original data source, you will just need to setup it the same way in the target GP project.

5

Hi Dmitry,

i tried adding values to DUration… now however all tasks seem to start on the same day… which is not as in the CSV

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image1727×377 37.4 KB

IMPORT_part.csv (1.3 KB)

Can you check what might be wrong… i am OK to use the interim step to calculate the duration, so i’d only use the Start date, the Duration and expect the application to set the enddate.

Thanks and best regards
simon

6

I believe that your date format is not dd/MM/yyyy (most likely dd/MM/yy).
In my test import worked fine.

7

Right, now i am seeing the same (i had the date set to dd/MM/YYYY instead of yyyy, probably as i was tweaking i left as that…) – but now stuff works fine, except for this one bug you mentioned too

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image1431×904 65.2 KB

… so now i think the thread should be about "start date incorrect as 03/… when it should be 01/… " :slight_smile:

Pls ping me here once you had it sorted out.

Thanks and best regards
simon

8

So, there is a bug in CSV import: it does not respect target project calendar settings, and assumes that Saturday and Sunday are weekend days, no matter what is configured in the target project. Since Feb 01 is a Saturday, it moves task start to the closest workign day which is Feb 03.

This will be fixed in the next minor update. Ticket in the issue tracker: