If you review plans
You read it, report on it, and have to say afterwards that nothing changed while you had it.
Microsoft Project plan viewer · v5.5e
You read what the project planner publishes.
Everyone on the project uses the plan. Only the planner can change it.
You have been sent a Microsoft Project plan and no reason to own Project. Ocean Plan Viewer opens the planner's XML export on Windows, Linux and the Raspberry Pi.
Free demo, 50 tasks · one file, about 1 MB · no installer, no runtime
You need to use a plan you did not write
If you receive plans
Your client's schedule sets your week. Your dates and your people are in it. So you ask for a PDF, and it is stale the next time the plan moves.
Neither of you needs a licence to do it.
Tasks, slip, float, notes — and a warning if anything is wrong
-
The Gantt chart, with the baseline underneath
The plan as approved sits under the plan as it stands, so you see slip instead of calculating it. Zoom from days to months; collapse the outline to the level you want to talk about.
-
The critical path, and where it has already failed
Critical tasks are flagged and the driving links between them drawn in red. Where a task's constraints cannot all be met, the negative float is shown as a number, not rounded to zero.
-
Tasks, resources and the planner's own notes
Dates, duration, progress, slack and assigned resources. A resource list with what each one is on. Every note in full.
-
Search, and a chart you can put in a report
Find a task by name and jump to it. Export the whole Gantt as a PNG, at full length, for a status report or a slide.
-
Opens from a file, a share or an address
Local file, UNC path, or an
http/httpsaddress. A plan published to an intranet stays current for everyone reading it, and a link in Teams opens it directly. -
Tells you when the file is wrong
Broken dependency links, implausible dates, missing resources: counted and reported, each with a severity. If something cannot be shown, it says so.
Getting a project plan to view
The planner exports and sends it
In Microsoft Project:
File → Save As → XML. That file is a snapshot of the version they chose to publish. You get it as an attachment, a path on a share, or an intranet address. If you were sent an.mpp, the export is what to ask for.You open it
Double-click the viewer and drag the plan onto it. The chart is there.
A single file that installs nothing, stores nothing, sends nothing and changes nothing
Nothing here needs an administrator, a subprocessor contract or a patching plan, so there is little for an approval to cover. Every clause above is checkable before anyone fills in a form.
No installerNo administrator rights, no ticket to raise. Run it from a folder or a stick; to remove it, delete the file.
No runtime to installNothing bundled. It uses the graphics libraries you already have, so you patch nothing extra.
No account, no telemetryNo subprocessors, no hosting question, no personal data leaving the machine. The only network request is one you type yourself.
No altered copiesIt cannot edit a plan. One published version stays in circulation, and a reviewer can say that what they examined is what they were sent.
What your IT department will ask →
It reads the XML a planner exports from Microsoft Project, not .mpp. What if I only have an .mpp file? →
Download the demo
One file per platform. Unzip and run. The demo shows the first 50 tasks and says so when it truncates; everything else is the full program.
Downloads — version 5.5e
- ocean-plan-viewer-5.5e-windows-x64.zip · 1.13 MB
SHA-256 04370b73deda5171f6ac0754951d3dac82fdcde21e00604cff22b83ad9f336d8 - ocean-plan-viewer-5.5e-linux-x64.zip · 0.76 MB · x86-64
SHA-256 86be83ba5230cf44d916b035c60e4dc0ec8167a639c55091c76be6795c7bd535 - ocean-plan-viewer-5.5e-raspbian-arm64.zip · 0.73 MB · 64-bit Raspberry Pi OS
SHA-256 585e78e9155220fc264b9ea022f015a63dad6e627c340b5c858d81e385781d57
Windows might say the publisher is unknown. The program is not code-signed yet; the warning is about the missing signature. Choose More info, then Run anyway.
A sample project plan is included : 47 tasks, under the demo limit, so it opens complete.
Why we built this project viewer
Ocean Consulting GmbH has worked on banking data warehouses, mobile-operator migrations and datacenter moves since 1999, writing the plans and steering the teams that worked to them. The viewer was built in 2018 on one of those projects, because half the team could not open the plan they were working to.