Open an XER file online, without Primavera P6

What an .xer file is

An .xer file is the native export format of Oracle Primavera P6, the scheduling software used on large construction, engineering, energy and infrastructure projects. One file holds one or more projects: the work breakdown structure (WBS), the activities with their durations, dates and float, the logic between them (relationships), calendars, resources and their assignments, and often activity codes, user-defined fields and notes.

It is plain text: one table after another, each with a header line of field names and one line per record, separated by tabs. Contractors send them to owners and consultants with every schedule update, often because the contract requires the schedule in native P6 format, and claims consultants receive them as evidence.

Why it won’t open

P6 does not open an .xer file like a document: it imports it into its database, which needs a P6 license and, in companies, an administrator. Microsoft Project, Excel and other programs do not read the format, and Windows has no built-in program for it, so double-clicking the file does nothing useful.

What this viewer does

• Reads files exported by P6 Professional and P6 EPPM, finding each table and field by its name, so files from older and newer versions read the same way. Text in Windows-1252 (what P6 Professional writes in Western Europe and the Americas), UTF-8 and UTF-16 is recognized by itself.
• Lists every project in the file with its data date, start, finish and counts.
• Shows the WBS and every activity in P6’s order: activity ID, name, original and remaining duration, start and finish (with “A” for actual dates), total float and percent complete. Critical activities, with no float left, are marked in red.
• Shows everything about one activity on a click: type, status, calendar, actual, early, late and planned dates, constraint, free float, its predecessors and successors with relationship type and lag, and the resources assigned to it.
• Draws a Gantt chart with days, weeks or months as the scale, WBS summary bars, milestones, the data date and the done part of each bar.
• Finds activities by ID or name, also in very large schedules.
• Exports the schedule as an Excel workbook or CSV files, and the Gantt chart as a printable PDF (paid).

Dates, durations and float

The viewer shows the schedule as P6 calculated it, without recalculating anything:

• Dates are those P6 calculated at the last schedule run, as of the data date shown. A started activity shows its actual start, and a finished one its actual finish, marked “A”; the others show their remaining early dates.
• Durations and float are stored in hours in the file. They are shown in working days of each activity’s own calendar (8 hours a day on a standard calendar, 10 on a 10-hour calendar), as P6 does when set to use each calendar’s hours.
• Percent complete follows each activity’s type: physical percent where it is set, otherwise the share of the original duration already done.
• Not shown: activity codes, user-defined fields, notebooks, steps, baselines, risks and expenses. They stay in the file, and the list of tables in the viewer says what it contains.

What it does not do

• It does not reschedule: it shows the dates and float in the file, it does not run the critical path method again.
• It does not edit the schedule or save it back as .xer.
• It does not open P6 XML files or Microsoft Project files (.mpp).

Other ways to open an .xer file

• Primavera P6 Professional or P6 EPPM, if you have access: import it under File → Import (Professional) or under Projects → EPS → Actions → Import/Export Projects (EPPM), into a database where it can be rescheduled and edited.
• Ask the scheduler for a PDF of the Gantt chart and the activity layouts you need, or for an Excel export of the activities, if you only have to read it.

Your schedule stays on your device

Schedules are often confidential: bid schedules, delay analyses, contract updates. Here the file is read by code running in your browser; no code on the page sends the file, its name or anything in it anywhere, not even to our own domain. The exports are made in the page too.

Oracle and Primavera are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Microsoft, Excel and Microsoft Project are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. CantOpen is not affiliated with Oracle or Microsoft.