circular relationship

[mark]

First, let it be said that I have very little Project
usage experience.

(Excel would be a different story).

But, a user just sent me a file... upon clicking on it to
open it, it says:

*******************
No calculations can be performed at this time.

There is a circular relationship in task 107
of "PIPLauncherJSG". The successors of this task refer
back to this task or its predecessors, causing a circular
reference.

To remove the link that is causing the circular reference,
select the two tasks that are causing the circular link,
and then click Unlink Tasks on the Standard toolbar.
********************

Upon pressing the OK button from that message, the
application crashes, and this message displays:

*************
WINPROJ.exe has generated errors and will be closed by
Windows. You will need to restart the program.

An error log is being created.
*************

Does anyone have suggestions as to how to fix this?
Can it be fixed?

 

[JackD]

You can try the following:

Open a new project.
From tools menu /options / calculation tab set calculation to manual.
From the insert menu, insert the broken project.
Copy and paste the tasks into a new file.

This may or may not work.
If it doesn't then there may be no cure.

-Jack

 

[mark]

You can try the following:


Thank you, Jack.

That appears to work.

In followup discussion, the user said that the file was
not a complex one, and may have recovered it from a backup.

I will check.

The technique that you described did work to open the
file, though, and is very helpful to know!

 

[JackD]

Glad it helped.
When Project 98 came out (before the first service pack) this technique was
a way of life.
It was really terrible.

-Jack

 

[John]

Mark,
Just as an added note, a common cause of circular relationships is when
a user puts a predecessor or successor on a Summary line. That may not
be what happened in your case, but I thought it worth mentioning just in
case.

John