MSProject / MSAccess errors under Win2K Pro

[dgmoore]

This one has me stumped!

I have a process that employs Access2K to control Project03 under
Win2KPro to generate Gantt chart gifs. This is a stable process that
has been running error-free for years. I recently have begun to get
"server threw an exception" and "remote procedure call failed" errors
at random points throughout the process and have been unable to
diagnose the cause.

The process (which runs entirely on the local c: drive) opens a
specific mpp file, exports data from Access to Project, iterates
through the records and sets some flags, draws dependency lines, and
applies a series of filters to generate Gantt chart gifs.

Errors have begun to occur sporadically: when Access executes FileOpen
to open the Project mpp file; when Project executes any of several
methods after the Project file has been opened (setting a flag or other
field to a value, ApplyFilter, SelectTaSkColumn, SelectTaskCell,
LinkTasksEdit, RowDelete, FileSave). There is no consistency to these
errors - they occur at different points in the process in different
sessions. The errors are fatal - when they occur I get a "Project has
encountered and error and needs to close", which terminates the
process.

I have:

- rebooted the workstation repeatedly
- reinstalled Project and Office
- rebuilt my profile
- scrubbed the data to make sure there is no data corruption
- created new mdb and mpp files from scratch, not importing any
objects from the original apps
- tried the process on different workstations
- set security to low in Project

all to no avail.

If anybody has any suggestions I'd appreciate hearing them.

Thanks
Dave

 

[alforj]

Does it ever make it all the way through anymore, or does it always
error-out (just at different points)? Can you think of any other
changes that you might have made (file/folder permissions, patches,
References, etc.)?

 

[dgmoore]

Nope, it always errors out. I've looked high and low for any such
changes, and LAN staff swear there have been no environment changes.
Obviously something has changed somewhere, because it used to work and
now it doesn't! This is my application and nobody touches it but me - I
remain mystified.

 

[Rod Gill]

Will it work on a Win XP desktop?

 

[dgmoore]

Rod, Unfortunately I don't have an XP platform to try it on. The LAN in
question is all Win2KPro all the time.

Dave

 

[dgmoore]

I found the problem! My applications all employ a query in Access as
the recordsource for the export to Project - this has worked fine in
all other installations of the application. However, the application in
question gets its data from an Excel spreadsheet (as opposed to an
Oracle db in one case, a SQL Server db in a second case, and a Project
file in a third case). The spreadsheet is imported to Access via
TransferSpreadsheet, and a query on the resulting table is the
recordsource for the export to Project. On a hunch, I created a
temporary table and appended the query's records to it, then used the
temporary table as the recordsource rather than the query, and voila! -
Project is happy again.

Evidently the query on the imported spreadsheet was allowing some sort
of data corruption to occur, causing Project to choke. Appending the
data to a temp table apparently corrects the corruption - I'd love to
know what it is, but I'll settle for having the problem solved.

Cheers
Dave