Maintaining automated links of milestones btw projects

[Ben Comer]

I am interested in how to keep milestones in a high-level master plan
automatically updated to reflect the milestones in individual team plans. To
do this I copy the milestone from the team plan, go to the high-level master
plan and click paste special, paste link. When changes occur in the team
plan, I want them automatically updated in the high-level master plan. This
works sometimes, but often links mysteriously break. When I open the
high-level master plan, it tells me the links are not working and asks if I
want to delete the link. If I say yes, the link is deleted to the team plan
milestone, and I have to re-establish it. If I say no, the fields appear to
still be linked (the little symbol shows up in the right corner of the
milestone on the high-level master plan), but the links do not work. If I
make a change to the team plan milestone, the changes does not automatically
occur in the high-level master plan. How do I keep the links from breaking?
What is causing them to break?

 

[John]

I am interested in how to keep milestones in a high-level master plan
automatically updated to reflect the milestones in individual team plans. To
do this I copy the milestone from the team plan, go to the high-level master
plan and click paste special, paste link. When changes occur in the team
plan, I want them automatically updated in the high-level master plan. This
works sometimes, but often links mysteriously break. When I open the
high-level master plan, it tells me the links are not working and asks if I
want to delete the link. If I say yes, the link is deleted to the team plan
milestone, and I have to re-establish it. If I say no, the fields appear to
still be linked (the little symbol shows up in the right corner of the
milestone on the high-level master plan), but the links do not work. If I
make a change to the team plan milestone, the changes does not automatically
occur in the high-level master plan. How do I keep the links from breaking?
What is causing them to break?

Ben,
This is very similar to another post I answered yesterday. The reason
you are having trouble is that Paste Links are very fragile and subject
to breakage and/or corruption. Generally, I do not recommend the use of
Paste Links unless the user is extremely disciplined and has control of
all the files where the links reside (i.e. don't Paste Link to someone
else's file).

My guess is that due to uncontrolled "care and feeding" of the Paste
Links, some of them are corrupted. This often happens when the source or
destination file is moved around and/or saved to multiple locations.

A much better approach is to use external Predecessors/Successors. These
links are more robust although there can still be issues occasionally.
For more information on how to set up external links, see the Project
help file.

Hope this helps.
John
Project MVP