Circular References

N

Nuala

On opening one of the project plans from project server 2003, we get a
message saying calculations cannot be performed with the task ID
number due to a circular reference. The message also refers to
successors and predecessors, but there are none!

On the task usage page, reources have blank assignements, i.e. the
task names have been deleted, yet there is baseline cost associated
with them

Actuals have been accepted into the plan, therefore in order no to
lose these, we cannot restore a previous backup.
Unfortunately we do not have a transaction log back up.

Has anyone got any suggestions are to how to remedy this?

Thanks in advance

Nuala
 
G

Gav

Nuala

I have come accross Circular refernce errors on a number
of occaisons in various shapes and forms in 2003. I can
normally fix these by one of the following:

Highlight the task in question then simply indent and
outdent then save and close. Next time you re-open the
plan the Circular Reference will be gone and the
corruption fixed.

If the task no longer exists it is a little harder, in
Gantt view collapse all tasks to Project Summary task
level and then expand all of the tasks so no tasks are
hidden save close and re-open plan, this should have
fixed it.

I know this does not sound very scientific but I can
normally fix them by this method.

Gav
 
L

Larry

Nula,

I am willing to bet that at the last save you received an SQL Error message
"[Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server Driver][SQL Server]Cannot insert duplicate key
row in object 'MSP_TASKS' with unique index 'I_MSP_TASKS'. If you have seen
this error then read on...

I fought this endlessly. The result is a corrupt project file on your
server that opens with a circular reference error and a fully collapsed
project outline. If you expand the outline, you see the tasks and cannot
find the circular reference. At that point you have no resources,
assignments or enterprise variables.

If you get this error, immediately do a file.save offline followed by a
file.save online and the error will be corrected and the saved file will then
be OK. If you cannot save offline, save as an .mpp file and then save it
back onto you server. The .mpp approach will create a new project with a new
project ID while the offline save preserves all of the original project
stuff. As we are integrated into an external time keeping system we needed
the original project ID if at all possible.

Micorosoft has a problem with their code that allows duplicate Unique Task
ID's. They blamed "cut and paste" of tasks as the culprit but I will tell
you that it was not. Cut and Paste of a task record is OK per the tech at
Microsoft once we escalated this problem. SP1 for Project Professional seems
to have corrected it for us.

Good Luck,

Larry Seale
 
Top