Importing Gantt charts

A Gantt chart is not just the tab you can see. Behind every chart sit two hidden sheets — its settings and its resource list — and the chart is wired to them. That is why copying a tab from one file to another with Excel’s own commands doesn’t work: you get the grid, but not the project. Import is the tool that brings the whole thing across properly, rebuilding each chart on the current layout as it goes.

01 Before you start

Import copies from one open workbook to another. There is no file browser and no “choose a file” step — Gantt Excel lists the Gantt Excel workbooks you already have open, so the file you are importing from must be open in the same copy of Excel as the file you are importing into.

Confirm the question that appears — Import a project from another Gantt Excel workbook. Continue? — and the Import window opens.

02 The Import window

The window is titled Select Gantt Chart and has two lists, one above the other.

1Select Gantt Excel Workbook. Every other open workbook that holds a chart. 2Select Project. The chosen workbook’s charts, as tick boxes. 3Tick boxes: all ticked the moment you pick a workbook. 4Select All / Deselect All. One toggle; the caption names its next action. 5Import Project. Imports every ticked chart and closes the window.

1. Select Gantt Excel Workbook. Every other open workbook that contains at least one Gantt chart. Your current workbook is never listed — you can’t import a chart into itself.
2. Select Project. The charts inside the workbook you picked, one line each.
3. Tick boxes. Every chart is ticked the moment you choose a workbook. Untick the ones you don’t want.
4. Select All / Deselect All. A single toggle. Its caption always says what the next click will do, and it is greyed out while the list is empty.
5. Import Project. Brings in every ticked chart, then closes the window.

Two things the window will tell you if you get ahead of yourself. Click Import Project without choosing a workbook and it says Select a Gantt Excel project file (v3.0 or later). Untick every chart and click Import Project and it says Select a Gantt project worksheet. instead. Neither closes the window — nothing is imported, and the lists are still there for you to put right.

03 Importing several charts at once

Leave more than one chart ticked and Gantt Excel imports them in a single run. A progress window shows Importing Project – Please wait for a few seconds… with the current chart and its position in the queue underneath — Bathroom Refit (2/4) — so a long run never looks stalled.

Worked example — bringing a whole file forward

Your Kitchen Refit 2025.xlsx holds four charts: Kitchen Refit, Bathroom Refit, Utility Room and an old Snagging List you no longer need. Open it alongside your new workbook, open the Import window, pick Kitchen Refit 2025.xlsx, untick Snagging List, and click Import Project. Three new tabs appear, and one summary reports 3 Gantt chart(s) imported.

Open the new Kitchen Refit tab and check a task you know: “Fit kitchen units” still runs 6 July → 10 July, still shows 5 days, still sits at 40% complete, and still waits on “Order worktops”. The timeline covers the same span of dates the source chart was set to, and the bars are the colours you set there — the chart looks like the one you left, because its settings came with it.

One thing deliberately doesn’t follow: the view. The timeline’s start and end dates are carried across, but the zoom level is not, so a chart you left in Weekly or Monthly arrives showing Daily — the starting view for a daily chart. Nothing about the schedule has changed; pick the view you want again from Gantt Excel → Views and Timeline, as described in Views, timeline & zoom.

Nothing was skipped in that run, because all three ticked charts came in. When a chart can’t be brought in, a second line counts the failures and lists them — 1 skipped:, then one indented line per chart with its sheet name and a short reason. Read that number carefully: it counts the charts that did not make it, not the ones that did. See section 06 for what the reasons mean. The whole summary appears once, at the end, under the title Import Gantt Charts; nothing interrupts the run in the middle.

Import a single chart instead and there is no summary at all — that flow confirms the one project as it finishes: Import complete for project: Kitchen Refit. Setup complete.

04 What each chart brings with it

An imported chart is a fully independent project in your workbook, not a linked copy. It arrives with its own settings sheet and its own resource list, so changing it can never disturb the file it came from — or any other chart in this one.

Links are the one thing that gets checked rather than simply copied. Import is the only route that can put dependencies onto a sheet without them passing the checks the Task Form’s Dependencies tab applies, so a hand-edited or badly damaged source file could otherwise deliver a loop — task A waiting on B, B waiting on A. A loop has no valid order, so those tasks would silently stop responding to the schedule. Gantt Excel therefore breaks any loop as the chart arrives and tells you exactly what it dropped:

A bulk run says the same thing more briefly, and says it once at the end rather than chart by chart. The closing summary grows a third part, headed These projects imported with damaged task links repaired:, and under it each affected chart is named with its own 2 circular link(s) removed: and the same predecessor → successor lines. It sits below the imported and skipped counts, and it is a note rather than a skip — those charts did import.

Links that carried no intent at all — one naming a task that isn’t in the file, a task linked to itself, the same link twice, or a task linked to its own summary task — are counted rather than listed, because there is nothing to restore.

05 Charts that share a resource list

In a well-organised workbook, several projects often draw on one resource list — the same trades, the same rates, the same holidays. Import preserves that, but only if you bring those charts across together.

Tick both Kitchen Refit and Bathroom Refit in one import, and if they shared a resource list in the source file they end up sharing a single new copy here. Edit a rate once and both charts see it, exactly as before.

How resource lists, calendars and rates work once they are here is covered in Resources, calendars & working days.

06 Importing from an older version

This is what import is really for. Gantt Excel doesn’t check the source file’s version number, because it doesn’t need to: rather than copying columns across by position, it builds a brand-new chart on the current layout and moves each column across by its name. Old spellings that were renamed along the way are translated first.

That is why a chart built years ago — missing columns this version adds, carrying columns this version dropped, or with your own columns rearranged — imports cleanly instead of landing one column out. Anything the current version no longer has is dropped; anything it has gained is filled in for you, including the priority and status codes on charts that predate them.

Five things can still go wrong on the way in, and each says so plainly. Most stop the chart outright. The missing resource sheet is the odd one out — the chart comes through, with its resource list rebuilt for you.

07 Duplicating a chart in this workbook

Import is for bringing a chart in from another file. To make a second copy of a chart you already have, use Settings → Projects, select the project in the list, and click Duplicate. You get a genuinely separate project — its own settings and its own resource list — starting from a copy of the tasks.

You can also copy a chart tab with Excel’s own Move or Copy → Create a copy. Gantt Excel notices, because that route bypasses the product entirely and the copied tab would otherwise still be wired to the original’s hidden sheets — two tabs sharing one timeline, one set of filters and one resource list, each moving when you touch the other.

So the copy is quietly turned into a real, independent project the first time you click its tab. Nothing to do; it just works.

08 Common questions

Related: Creating your first chart · Resources, calendars & working days · Exporting & printing · Settings