Why can’t I save my project as a web page?
“Microsoft Office Project 2007 does not support the ability to save a project file as a Web page. Instead, you can save a project as a more flexible XML file. This enables you to apply any style sheet to the XML file.”
And by “more flexible” they mean “not useful to someone who just wants to share a project plan with colleagues on Macs and Linux boxes.”
B as in B. S as in S. The reason I can’t save my Microsoft Project file as a web page is then there wouldn’t be a need for the Microsoft Project Server 2007! Frankly, I cannot think of a single reason they wouldn’t have an HTML export feature in a recent product release.
Microsoft: not interested in helping you just get your work done.
You need to realize what Project Server 2007 offers to enterprise businesses… HTML pages are static and not representative of current updates to projects. If you are using MPP2007 to make proposals, you are using the wrong tool. Projects are dynamic entities that must be real-time and Microsoft knows this and built Project Server for that reason.
You should use Project-ON-Demand from Projity (http://www.projity.com) We are using them at IBM and it is a complete replacement of Microsoft Project but in your browser. It eliminates all the crap you are mention
Dynamic in what regard? In all the projects I’m working on I maintain the project plan, and as I update it I’d like to just export it as HTML so that others can view it. The project might be fairly dynamic, but the plan isn’t dynamic enough to warrant another piece of software. Right now I publish it as PDF for that reason. Also, I don’t work in a Windows Server environment, mostly all UNIX hosts, so it’s easy for me to do HTML to a Samba share. Not as easy to bring up a Windows Server software package.
I am getting access to a Project Server 2007 implementation right now so I’ll see what it’s about.
Huh? Project Server 2007’s got Project Server Web Access where everything is dynamically made availiable as a web page.
Yeah, but MS Project 2007 (*not* Server) can’t save as HTML. That’s my complaint.
The answer is simple, don’t use MS Project 2007, instead use MS Project 2003 where you can simply click “File | Save as Web Page…”.
Very frustrating indeed unless you have time to construct your own XSL file to render the XML in a gantt chart… good luck with that 😛
What really gets my knickers in a knot is them saying “bla bla you can apply stylesheet bla bla” and that’s it. Not, here’s a good place to start if you want to build a stylesheet, or here are some examples, or my personal favourite, oh, did we casually forget that you can only do that with Project Server 2007 😛
Removing the option to save as HTML makes no sense. If I want to quickly share the schedule with an engineer it was always the best option. I agree that with the lack of helpful tips from MS on what to use as an alternative.
Try this out: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa164658(office.10).aspx
It links to an XSL that is bare-bones but can serve as a good base for your own HTML.
Here is a workaround:
1. Load the little app at this link:
http://vsbabu.org/mt/archives/2005/05/28/export_ms_project_to_html.html
2. Save your project plan as 2003 version.
3. Run the app that you downloaded.
It is a little rough around the edges but it works fairly well.
I love being able to save as HTML and was quite dismayed that Microsoft eliminated that feature.
Yeah. MS really dropped the ball on this one, I think. And I’m certain Bob Plankers is quite correct – they surely removed it so they could sell MS Porject Server instead.
I have a meeting in 30 minutes and I was planning on posting MS Project HTML to our shared site. I can’t believe MS removed this feature. I cant wait for Google to come out with a version of Project and updates there other apps so we can abandon MS forever.
Fools.
Just an idea – I recently ran into this issue as well and found an easy workaround.
I saved the plan as a PDF and distributed this(most people have a PDF reader).
(There are free pdf creators online which you can download.)
worked well for me anyway!
In a field where there are many project management software products, MS Project, or Microsoft Project…
I am sick and tired of Microsoft.
To not empower people to save project plans (gant charts) to html is just plain mean.
Note I dont say stupid becuase what they have done is mean.
Typical of their arrogance and abuse of power.
Cant wait to move off their shit.
I consider that it is a real problem that MS Project “professional” does not include something so simple as an html export. As it mentioned in other comments because it is in Prj. Server.
Project server is the largest time sink that I know for very little benefit, it may have been Ok around 10 years ago… but now a days is slow, cumbersome to set up, hungry for resources not only HW but also people. I would not buy it again neither I would recommend.
Initially I was thinking it it has to do with enabling few options. After reading through google and comments, I am not alone with this frustration.
I wish MS listens to these comments and makes this SAVE AS HTML option available.
I used save as HTML every week to produce easy friendly custom reports to e-mail to folks that did not have MS-Project. I can’t believe that the feature is no longer there. I found that all of my custom views were available but can now only export to Excel. This is another dissappointment because you cannot tell the summary tasks from the detail as they are all using the same font. At least MS could have provided a Friendly spreadsheet export.
Web pages are static and last time I checked so are XML files… Thanks Microsoft Stoog.
The link and the tool provided by NC PMP (vsbabu.org) is just awesome. Works quite well for me. Saved my day. Thank you for sharing.
I too found the tool provided by NC PMP (vsbabu.org) to be fantastic. Thank you!
If anyone out there could help I would be so appreciative – I have been banging my head against the wall trying to communicate my MSProject plan to a team of Mac users and without the “Save As HTML” option I am really struggling! I was so hopeful when I came across the tool mentioned above, but every time I run it I get an error. I have even tried creating a very simple plan with just a summary task and 3 subtasks, save in 2003 format, and it still crashes. The error message says “An error has occurred in the script on this page – Line 526, Character 7, The Server Threw an Exception, Code 0”
Any chance anyone has seen this before? I feel like I have tried everything – please help!! Sorry if this sounds dramatic – but I have spent just so long trying to figure out a solution to get the project tasks out to my team in a sustainable way.
Thanks!!!
-Jen
Hi Jen,
Did you get anywhere with this? I too was very hopeful about the vsbabu tool but can’t get it working!
Any advice about getting project exports to look half decent would be appreciated!
Thanks!
This sucks big time
I have been building up a project and now want to export an html version and find that there isn’t an option – wtf!
Our customer demands projects in a word format, so we need to edit the display a lot to get it into a format they like
We ‘sed’ to be able to export it as html, drop it into word and edit from within there – export various fields, leaving others out
This smacks of typical MS arrogance. Push people to a server version – useless, there are only 2 people here who do project plans and there is no way we need the server version
Yet another product that MS has made worse in a successive release
i cannot get vsbabu.org software to work .. just comes up as a blank page. any ideas