Cannot open project files - Doesn't anyone have a solution?

[Kevin Newman]

I am using Project 2003 Pro SP2. I have a bout a dozen inserted projects
using a common resource pool. Yesterday whe I was shutting down (File/Close)
for the day Project prompted me to save the individual inserted projects as
normal and I selectected "Yes To All" as usual. However when the files were
done saving the master project did not close. After a couple of tries it
finally closed.

This morning I came in and opened the master project and it opened normally
however two inserted projects (about 200 tasks each) will not open. I get a
"File cannot be found" message. So I tried opening them up individually from
Project and I get a message that "Project cannot open the file". So I tried
opening them from Explorer and get the same "Project cannot open the file"
message. I checked with the project manager and he did not have the file
open, and no one else did either.

I really need to recover this file as it contains actual and accounting
information. Is there any way to do this? I have read the replies to folks
with the same problem and no one seems to have a solution. I read a posing on
"File Bloat", but the solution will not work for me as I cannot open the
files at all to be able to save them in the database format. Please help!!!

 

[Gary L. Chefetz [MVP]]

Kevin:

When files become corrupt, there's not much you can do except revert to a
backup.

 

[Kevin Newman]

Thank you Gary. Thats what I am doing. Our shared drive is backed up daily so
I am having our IT group restore the files from the day before yesterday.
Just wondering if there was a quicker solution. It typically takes a day or
so to get restorations from our IT group.

Thanks again.

Kevin

 

[Mike Glen]

Hi Kevin,

I don't know whether this will work or not, but try opening a new file and
then inserting the bad one. You might be lucky!

Mike Glen
MS Project MVP

 

[Steven Spears]

It won't help you today but in future, you can set MS Project to
automatically create a backup for you. That way, you never need to worry if
you have a backup or not or how long it will take tech support to restore it
for you.

 

[Kevin Newman]

Thanks for the suggestion Mike, but Project didn't recognize the corrupted
file.

As a side note I still haven't gotten the backups from my IT folks yet.

 

[Kevin Newman]

Steven,

Thanks. I've never set it up to create backups.

Does it create a backup for the Resource Pool or for the inserted projects
or both?

Or do I have to set each individual project to automatically create a backup?

Kevin

 

[Steven Spears]

Hi Kevin,
You can set it up globally so that all projects are backed up when they are
created. They become a copy in the same directory you story your files.
What I do is simple move these backups to another directory or disk so that
even if the one directory or disk was corrupted, I still have my projects.
The backup does keep all project information so you would have your resorces,
costs, budgets etc still there within the projects.

 

[Mike Glen]

That's a shame It reinforces the essential need for regular backups!

Mike Glen
Project MVP

 

[Rob Schneider]

Kevin,

You may wish to consider doing your Project mpp backups to your hard
disk c: into a special folder, e.g. c:\backup\, in addition to the
officially-sponsored-but-not-usefull IT-sponsored backup ...