Project not checked out to you anymore

[Jo]

Using Project Professional 2003, a user had opened a project file, and a
while later when he tried to save/close, he got a dialog:

Project not checked out to you anymore.
The project is no longer checked out to you on the Project Server. To close
the project, click OK. To save the project as a file, click Cancel, then save
it as a file on your computer.

And sure enough, another user is able to open that same project file as
read/write.

What would cause a project to no longer be checked out to someone? (I
certainly haven't been checking projects in.)

Thanks
--Jo

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Jo --

If the Project Server administrator checked in the project through PWA while
someone had it checked out, the user would see the error message you
indicate. Also, if the original project owner checked in the project using
the check in option on the Project Center page, this would also create the
situation you describe. Just a couple of thoughts. Perhaps someone else
has an idea, too. Hope this helps.

 

[Jo]

Dale,

I'm sure I (Administrator) didn't check in any projects. (No one else in the
Administrator group has connected today.) I'm sure the user didn't, either.
:-/

If there were a network hiccup, I would have thought there would be some
other indication - other networked applications would have failed, or in this
case, the project file would have closed.

In this case, the user wasn't attempting to make changes, but it would be
extremely frustrating to come back to this application, make a bunch of
edits, then find out you couldn't save them. I can't find this in the KB or
anywhere, and I don't see that there's any indication the project is "not
checked out" anymore, until a save occurs. :-{

Thanks
--Jo

 

[Gary L. Chefetz \(MVP\)]

Jo:

Could very well be a lost connection to the database via a network hiccup.
If the user had made many edits, the way to recover from this and preserve
the changes would be save as an mpp file and swap out the new version for
the old. If your network is flaky, and we've seen this type of instability
in some of our clients networks, a mitigation strategy you might consider is
to have your PMs take their projects offline before editing. This is
particularly useful if your PMs are in the habit of keeping their plans open
on their desktops all day or while at lunch as well as for unstable
networks.

--

Gary L. Chefetz, MVP
"We wrote the book on Project Server
http://www.msprojectexperts.com

-

 

[Jo]

Thanks - maybe I'll have the network guys look into things. I can't believe
our internal network would be that flaky, but I guess stranger things have
happened.

Saving as mpp and swapping that file in won't work if someone else had
checked out the file and edited it since the first user "didn't have it
checked out anymore." :-( We'll lose the other persons edits.

I'll suggest the "work offline" feature. I also suggested that they should
save frequently, just to be sure they still can - if they leave for lunch and
come back, press 'save' just to make sure it still works, before they start
editing. Unfortunately, saves seem to be getting really slow. The admins are
still working on getting SP1 and the subsequent hotfix installed; I'm hoping
that helps with the slow saves and a few other errors.

--Jo