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Master & Sub-Project Schedules in MSP as One Sched

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Brian Cameron
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I have created several MS Project schedules which were required at the time. These now have activities linked across them. Driving the tasks as required to show potential problems.

I have created a master project, having the sub-projects inserted. Which satisfies the needs at the moment.

I have now been asked if it is possible to create the master schedule as a single large project, hence no further need in the future to have links between projects as they will be in the one project, less danger of deleting files or other errors.

Any Ideas as to how I can create this monster.

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Brian Cameron
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Denise
The sum total is approx 6,000 lines now. Versions are saved to separate folders weekly, monthly when reports are due.
Only two others have rights to access the folders, hard copies are available to anyone the correct clearance.
I’m using unique ID’s. If I copy the projects out of the master schedule, excluding the summary task (MSP 2003) I can create a single schedule, BUT where a link was to another project the schedule decides that it would be better to move the task to either above or below the linked task of the pasted sections ie out of the area/group where it came from rather than staying where it was originally. Otherwise this would be acceptable. I’m still working on it ........ I’ll get there sometime.

Brian
Denise Chapple
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Brian
Where you have created several smallish plans, linked them and now want to create one plan. First consider the total size because if the total of the inserted plans is too large MSProject might fall over. It would be better to keep the plans individual but to move them to a folder that only you and one or two other experience planners have access to. Often safer to zip up the set of plans first. I let my project managers have copies of their own plans and only put them back into the set if they have not corrupted them. I always take a copy of the unique id in each individual plan into a number column so that I can refer back to it from the shell or master plan.

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Paul

Thanks for your help.

I was thinking much the same, create a unique ID for each task across all projects in the master project (for info later).
Copy the master project to excel to save the logic information.
Remove external links in the individual projects.
Paste the projects one by one into a new project with no links between them, then use the ID’s saved from excel as a guide to re-link the tasks.
The resources and calendars should be ok.

Pretty messy and labour intensive, but not to many other options.
Paul Harris
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Brian

I do not think you will be able to do this without loosing you inter project links.

If I were doing this process I would make sure all calendars and resources of each project are either identical or unique.

I would then create a new project to copy and paste each project into and then re-establish the links.

Paul E Harris
Eastwood Harris Pty Ltd
Planning and Scheduling Book Publishers
www.eh.com.au