Circular Reference Problem

[JJ]

Does anyone have or is aware of a tool which can identify or locate
circular reference tasks in a Microsoft Project file? I would assume
that this would be fairly easy to do by hand on a small Project file
but nearly impossible to do on a larger file.

Thanks in advance!
JJ

 

[John]

Does anyone have or is aware of a tool which can identify or locate
circular reference tasks in a Microsoft Project file? I would assume
that this would be fairly easy to do by hand on a small Project file
but nearly impossible to do on a larger file.

Thanks in advance!
JJ

JJ,
The first place to look is at summary lines. Putting links on summary
lines is probably the number one way to create a circular link. It won't
always create a circular relationship, but it is the most likely
candidate.

Tracking a circular relationship on a large file isn't necessarily more
difficult. I recently found two circular relationships on a 8K task file
in a matter of minutes just using manual tracking. It all depends on how
complexity of the file's link structure. Nonetheless if you can get the
file open, (try setting calculation to manual if you haven't already),
you can go to fellow MVP, Jack Dahlgren's website at:
http://masamiki.com/project/macros.htm, and look for Jack's "Trace"
macro.

Hope this helps.
John
Project MVP