Yes ish!

I solved this by exporting the data to a csv, replacing id references with actual values

eg

sales_order.parter_id = 322,  - export this to csv you get the id 322 from res_partner, which openerp cannot import/match to partner

Using this SQL

copy
(SELECT so.id, rp.name FROM sale_order so
INNER JOIN res_partner rp ON so.partner_id = rp.id)
TO '/tmp/salesorder.csv' delimiter ',' csv header;

322 is replaced with the name from res_partner, which is easy to import