Example plans

The four sample MS Project plans on this page open in one click, with no file of your own and no account: an office fit-out, a viaduct with Cyrillic names throughout, a substation read from an .mpx, and a system rollout. Each carries real hierarchy, dependencies, a critical path and a working calendar with holidays shaded.

What these samples are for

Two situations bring people here. Either you want to see what a Microsoft Project schedule looks like before you have one of your own to open, or you have a file that matters and would rather watch a stranger's plan render correctly before handing over yours. Both are reasonable, and both take one click from here.

The plans below are not decoration. Each one exists because it breaks something that commonly goes wrong when a schedule is read outside Microsoft Project. The filename under each shows the format it was read from, because that is where a good many readers give up first.

What each one demonstrates

• Office fit-out - sixty-two tasks, phases inside phases, a full set of dependencies and a critical path that is genuinely under pressure. Four jobs are already past the date they were meant to finish, which is the state most schedules are actually in when somebody forwards you one.
• Виадук - the same structure with task names, resources and calendar entries in Cyrillic. Non-Latin text is where cheap converters fall over, usually producing rows of question marks, because the older .mpp generations store text in a way that punishes a lazy reader. Open it and the names are simply there.
• Substation extension - read from an .mpx, the plain-text format Microsoft dropped a quarter of a century ago and half the industry still exchanges. Fifty tasks, and the critical path runs through a nine-month manufacturing lead time rather than through anything happening on site - which is the answer people are usually after when they ask why a job cannot be pulled forward.
• System rollout - not a building. Fifty-seven tasks across configuration, data migration, testing and cutover, with the delay sitting in one integration that holds up everything behind it. This is the shape of plan most often sent to people who have no way to open it.

A note on what a sample can tell you

These run to fifty or sixty tasks each: real structure, real dependencies, invented content, no client data. Their dates move with the calendar, so the progress you see is always measured against today rather than against the day somebody built the file. A sample proves that hierarchy, dates, dependencies and text render properly. It cannot prove anything about how a fifteen-hundred-task programme behaves, which is a fair question - the honest answer is to open yours and see, and since nothing is stored, that costs you nothing but the time it takes.

There is no download link on this page, deliberately. The samples open in the viewer; they are not offered as files to take away. If you came looking for an example .mpp to test some other tool with, the file already sitting in your inbox is a better test than anything we could hand you.

Check the difference before you upload anything

This page has an unusual advantage over the rest of the argument: you do not have to believe any of it. Most free viewers for this format render a plan as pages you scroll and download as a PDF - a picture of the schedule rather than the schedule. The difference sounds small written down and is obvious the moment you touch it, so open the office fit-out sample and try the four things a page image cannot do.

Switch the scale from day to quarter and back. Collapse a phase and expand it again. Click a task and read its predecessors, resources and notes in the panel. Trace a dependency arrow to where it lands. That is roughly ten seconds of work, it costs nothing, and it is a far better test than any description - including this one - of whether this is the kind of tool you need.

Then, if it is, open your own file. Same behaviour, no daily counter running down, and nothing kept afterwards.

Common questions

Can I download these as .mpp files?

No. The samples open directly in the viewer; they are not offered as files to download. If you need a real .mpp to test with, the plan someone sent you is the best one to use - opening it here costs nothing and stores nothing.

Why look at a sample before my own plan?

To see how a schedule is drawn before handing over a file that may be confidential. The samples cover the three things that usually break elsewhere: deep nesting, non-Latin task names and the XML flavour of the format.

Are these real schedules?

They are small plans built to exercise the reader - real structure, real dependencies, invented content. No client data appears in them.