Merlin: MS Project MPX vs XML as exchange formats to Merlin (Mac)

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Merlin’s compatibility to Windows and mainly MS Project is very important not only to us but also to our users.  What if you were practicing project management on windows and have lots of existing projects which you would like to use now on your Mac? Or what it you have to forward a project to a Windows user needing to edit it further in MS Project? That’s fine. With Merlin you can handle both situations just as well.

Merlin opens MS Project .mpx, .mpp, .xml file formats and exports in .xml, .mpx.

Are you wandering which file format should be preferred? The answer is easy:
We -and even Microsoft- recommend to use the XML format as it is open and reliable.

Only when trying to exchange files with MS Project users of older versions than MS Project 2000, you would need to choose a legacy format like mpx.

Simple, isn’t?

6 thoughts on “Merlin: MS Project MPX vs XML as exchange formats to Merlin (Mac)”

  1. Why are there 2 xml formats then? One for MS XML and another one? What is the difference and is one ‘better’ than the other?
    Best regards,
    Michael

  2. The other XML format is a Merlin XML format. It can get transformed by XSLT into other formats, like XHTML for example. This could help integrating projects into applications that won’t accept any of the other file formats which Merlin can export to.

  3. Is there a description of the exported XML format? I would like to create an import from our application using XML.

  5. I tried to do this but my MS Project 2010 won’t open either the .mpx format nor the .xml format.. This is currently making my life little difficult.. What do you suggest?

  6. The mpx format is a legacy format for MS Project 2000 or older. For MS Project 2010 you need to export from Merlin as MS Project XML; File > Export > MS Project > XML.

    To open the XML file in MS Project please proceed as shown here (MS Project 2007: http://projectwizards.net/en/macpm/merlin/merlin-to-ms-project-exchanging-files) or here (Project 2013: http://projectwizards.net/en/macpm/)

    If your MS Project XML does not open in MS Project 2010, please send it to the support team along with a screenshot of the error message.

    Best regards, Vicky

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