Excel Import: % Complete doesn’t import correctly

Symptoms

When importing your project from Excel, Office Timeline Online seems to divide your Percent Complete data by 100 and then round it to 1 or 0.

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Overview

Typically, this issue is related to the way the Excel data is set up (get an Excel formatting sample here). To be imported successfully into Office Timeline Online, the records in the Percent Complete column should contain only numbers, without the actual “%” symbol. This is because, in Excel, the underlying value of a percentage is usually stored as a decimal, so even if you see “80%” in a cell, Excel actually stores it as “0.8”, and this is how Office Timeline will “read” it too.


Solution

To correctly import your tasks’ percentages into Office Timeline Online, you will need to remove the “%” symbol from all your % Complete records in Excel. Here’s how to do it quickly for all tasks at once:

  1. Open your Excel spreadsheet and select all data in the Percent Complete column. You don’t need to include the column header, if you have one.

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  2. With the column selected, Press Ctrl + H to open Excel’s Replace dialog. Here, type “%” in the Find what box, while leaving the Replace with field empty; then, click Find All.

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  3. Excel will display a list of all entries found within the selection. Click within that list and press Ctrl + A to select all entities. We’d recommend not to skip this step, as it ensures Excel will replace only the items within your selection and nothing else in your spreadsheet that contains the “%” symbol.

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  4. Now, click Replace All, and Excel will modify all data within your selection. Don’t worry if you now see some impossible numbers like 10000% in your Percent Complete column. It’s just because of the way Excel stores and formats data by default. Simply select the whole column, right-click the selection, and choose Format Cells -> General.Screenshot__5

  5. Click OK, and your % Complete column should now be formatted correctly and imported into Office Timeline Online successfully.percent-complete-import-successful