Automatically convert a MindMap to another app (e.g. MS Project)

Question

Here is the situation:

• We ran a brainstorming session to find all the tasks we will have to achieve for our project
• Now, I want to create a Gantt Planning (for instance) with all these tasks

We already built a MindMap with Xmind (I sometimes use Freemind too, or I could also export the Xmind to a Freemind format).
I would like to create a Gantt Planning in Microsoft Project (this is what we mainly use here).

My questions are:

• Has anyone of you ever tried to automate the creation of a Gantt from the MindMap (using each level of the MindMap as Title and each leaf as Tasks)?
• Would it be possible with VBA? Or C#? I didn't find much API to Xmind of Freemind, did I miss something?

Answer 1

If you can convert your mind map to Freemind, there is some documentation on the Freemind site which provides a couple of approaches to reformatting the Freemind file as an XML file which MS Project can read.

I maintain MPXJ, a library which can be used to read and write file formats which MS Project works with. I felt sure that someone had already written an add-on for Freemind which allowed you to export mind maps as a project plan using MPXJ... however I can't find a reference to it any more! If you don't mind a bit of coding (in Java, or any of the .Net languages) it wouldn't be too hard to achieve what you want using MPXJ.

Jon