The real cost is indecision, not migration
Project Online will be retiredon 30 September 2026 and sales are closed from 1 October 2025. Yet many PMs postpone: "migrating is a separate project". Not necessarily. If you need to move a plan - not reconstruct ten years of history - the minimum path closes in an afternoon. All you need is discipline and a precise order: export, simplify, recreate, verify. The biggest risk, in reality, is arriving at the last useful month with the data still inside and the right people already elsewhere.
Step 1 — Export (first hour)
Extract the state of the plan, not its past. Three roads, in order of importance.
- Excel via OData.Connect to the OData feed of the PWA site (site address followed by /_api/ProjectData/) and download the Projects, Tasks, Resources and Assignments tables. It's the proceduredocumented by Microsoftto create reports in Excel: the same data is enough to recreate the plan.
- Copy .mpp.If you have Project Professional, also save a .mpp copy of the plan as a control reference.
- Reports and documents.If the plan has reports saved in PWA or documents in the project site, copy them to the same folder: they are part of the state to keep.
Keep everything in a folder per project, with names that include the export date: you will need them for final verification.
Step 2 — Simplify (half an hour)
Migration fails when you bring everything. Bring only what is needed to govern the future: contractual milestones, ongoing and future activities, critical dependencies, key resources, date and cost baselines, project calendar. Leave: tasks closed for years, dead custom fields, personal views. The rule is simple: only what someone will need to consult next week goes into the new plan. Everything else is archive: it must be exported in step 1, not recreated.
Example (fictitious data): a plan with 600 activities accumulated over four years becomes a plan with 80 essential activities — and is governed better than before.
Step 3 — Recreate the essential state (one-two hours)
In the new tool, recreate, in this order: work structure and durations, dependencies, calendar, assignments, costs. Then lock the baseline: it is the step that transforms a copy into a control system, and thebaseline management guideexplains how to do it well. If you govern with the EVM, this is the time to set up the calculations, following theguide on EVM and final estimate. There is no need to replicate every custom field: recreate only those that feed reports or decisions. A field that no one has read for two years can remain in the export archive.
Step 4 — Verification (last hour)
Compare old and new, numbers in hand: milestone dates, cost totals, critical dependencies. Compare across three columns — milestones, costs, dependencies — and note any deviations. If something doesn't add up, correct it now: after disposal you will no longer be able to reopen Project Online to check. If the new tool generates progress reports, do a full test: generate the report of the newly migrated project and compare it with the latest report produced by Project Online.
5 point checklist
Check each point before declaring the migration closed: it is the border between "we copied the plan" and "we migrated the control".
- The contractual milestones are in the new plan with the same dates.
- The baseline is locked and matches the pre-migration plan.
- Critical dependencies are recreated without shortcuts.
- The cost and budget totals match the latest official version.
- The progress report is generated from new data, not old data.
What to realistically expect
A simple plan — a few dozen activities, a baseline, a few constraints — really migrates in an afternoon. A portfolio with dozens of projects, time-phased history and consolidated EVM requires days or weeks: in that case migrate the live projects first and treat the history as an archive. The first migration will be the slowest, because it includes method decisions: subsequent ones will go much faster. An operational tip: do the migration in two, one who exports and one who recreates. Those who export know Project Online, those who recreate know the new tool: the cross-verification of the two is the true guarantee of the quality of the result. In my opinion, the most common mistake is wanting to migrate the past instead of recreating the present: the value lies in the baseline and the next reports, not in the closed tasks of 2023.
Frequently asked questions
Do you need Project Professional to migrate?
No. The OData feed with Excel is enough for the essential state. The .mpp copy is useful as a control reference, it is not mandatory.
Do I lose the baseline?
Not if you export it. You save it as a table with the freeze date and recreate it as a baseline in the new tool: it is the first object to be recreated, before any report.
How much time does it really take?
For a simple plan, one afternoon. For a portfolio, days or weeks. The rule of thumb is to sort by value: live projects first, then historical.
Does ControlRoom import plans from Project Online?
No. ControlRoom Free does not automatically import Project Online plans. Supported data must be entered manually; Free sign-up and use are self-service with email verification. The guided demo is optional.
The next step
The shortest path only works if you have a running control system at the end. To understand if ControlRoom can be that system,request the free demo: you can evaluate on the example environment whether the reconstruction done in an afternoon compares favorably with what Project Online gave you.