Large XER Files do not play well with P6 Import and Export

Are you finding when you are importing or exporting a large number of projects that not all the projects are coming across when they are imported?

While converting a client from P6 V8.3 to V15.2, we found the data was not always transferred completely when we migrated large numbers of projects. Instead, with XER file sizes larger than 100,000 KB not all projects were exported and/or imported. We confirmed this recently on a subsequent project with a different client where we were migrating projects from P6 V7.3 to V17.12 and encountered the same issue.

In the first case, we exported the projects using an XER. Our file was over 300,000 KB. We found 4-5 projects were not exported. When we imported the same file, there were 2-3 additional projects that were not imported to the new database.

We looked at additional files for the same client and found that in XER files with a size larger than approximately 100,000 KB there were several projects in each XER missing when the file was imported.

Once we reduced the number of projects in the exported XER files to keep the file size under 100,000 KB, we found no projects were lost and our data was accurate.

Keep an eye on XER files larger than 100,000 KB when importing and exporting, they may not have complete data in them once they are imported.