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Import Microsoft Project XML into a Live Gantt — Then Ship Weekly Status

Drop a Microsoft Project XML into gantt-chart.io. Tasks, dates, and percent complete become a live Gantt. One click produces a weekly status page you can copy as a link or open in slide-deck.io. Binary OLE Project files are not parsed — save as XML first.

Import Microsoft Project XML into a Live Gantt

Most status meetings fail for a boring reason: the plan lives in one tool and the slides live in another. Someone exports a screenshot of a Gantt, pastes it into a deck, and by Thursday the dates are already wrong.

gantt-chart.io is built for the other path. Connect or paste the plan, or drop a Microsoft Project XML. Get a live Gantt. Generate a weekly status page from the same data. Optionally open that report in slide-deck.io as a native PowerPoint file.

What you can bring in today

  • Microsoft Project XML — in Project, File → Save As → XML (MSPDI). That is the format we parse.
  • A pasted task list — one task per line, with durations like "3d".

Binary OLE Microsoft Project files (.mpp) are not parsed. If you still have an .mpp, open it in Project and save as XML first.

Live connectors exist for ClickUp, Trello, and GitHub. Jira, Notion, Asana, Linear, and Slack are planned.

What the importer actually maps

Rows in the XML become tasks. Dates become bars. Percent complete becomes progress on the bar. Dependencies become links when the file has them. Milestones are zero-duration checkpoints.

What it does not invent: owners you did not export, buffers you did not schedule, or a "healthy green" status because a bar exists. If the file is missing finish dates, those tasks will not magically grow a timeline.

From the Gantt to weekly status

Once the chart is live:

  1. Open weekly status. It is one click, not a redesign.
  2. Copy the public page link. Guest links expire in 7 days.
  3. If you need a deck, use Create in slide-deck.io from that same report. The outline is the status, not a blank template.

Quarterly reports use the same connected work. The point is one dataset, two artifacts: the Gantt your team works in, and the page (or deck) leadership actually opens.

A working import checklist

From Microsoft Project

  1. File → Save As → XML.
  2. Drop the .xml on gantt-chart.io (Integration Center or the import surface).
  3. Check three things before you share: task names, start/finish, and whether dependency arrows survived.

When this is the wrong move

  • You need the full Microsoft Project desktop feature set (resource leveling, earned value, OLE macros). Keep Project. Export XML when you want a shareable Gantt and a status link.
  • You need Smartsheet's sheet collaboration as the system of record. Keep Smartsheet.
  • You do not have dates. A Gantt without dates is a list. Paste the list and assign dates first.

After the first import

The first change will arrive. Update the Gantt, then regenerate weekly status. Do not screenshot the old chart into last week's slides. The whole point of a live plan is that the status page is allowed to move.

Start from a pasted task list if you do not have a file yet. Import XML when you do. Either way the next artifact is the same: a Gantt you can edit, and a weekly status link you can send.

Related

Next step: Paste a task list. Get a live Gantt. Share a link when you’re ready — no account required to try.

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