Is there just one UNDO with Project?

[Greggy]

Right now I only have 1 UNDO (Ctrl-Z) for undoing mistakes in Project. Is
there anyway to increased the amount of UNDO's?

 

[Chris Marriott]

Greggy

I appear to be voice of doom and gloom....

No there is no way to increase the number of undos ...
--
Regards


Chris Marriott
UK - EPM Consultant & Trainer

 

[Greggy]

What a drag ...I wonder why they came to this decision.

Thanks very much for your reply. I won't shoot the messenger.

Greg

 

[dwolf]

Greggy,

We have been promised that the next verision will have muliple undos.
The issue here is that MSP is more of a database than a spreadsheet.
Every time you make a "simple" change to your schedule, there are a
mulititude of actual changes to the database. Keeping all of those
changes in memory becomes quite a task. We'll have to see what comes
out in 2006...

--dwolf

 

[JackD]

Upgrade next year. According to Dieter's blog 2006 finally has multiple
undo.
Start thinking in advance about what else you would like. It took about 10
years for this request to make it through

 

[davegb]

Greggy,

We have been promised that the next verision will have muliple undos.
The issue here is that MSP is more of a database than a spreadsheet.
Every time you make a "simple" change to your schedule, there are a
mulititude of actual changes to the database. Keeping all of those
changes in memory becomes quite a task. We'll have to see what comes
out in 2006...

--dwolf

I understand the issue, but Excel as the same problem, and has many
(can't remember how many) levels of undo. MS has just not bothered to
fix Project, probably because it's low priority compared with their
other more popular software.

 

[Simon Dullingham]

I understand that Project is build on the Access database (as are many other
microsft products). There is no undo in Access either. It is to do with the
"commit" feature that all databases have. To have an undo, you have to roll
back the database, which is extemely complex and full of potential problems
(i.e. bugs).

Simon

 

[davegb]

I understand that Project is build on the Access database (as are many other
microsft products). There is no undo in Access either. It is to do with the
"commit" feature that all databases have. To have an undo, you have to roll
back the database, which is extemely complex and full of potential problems
(i.e. bugs).

Simon

Project does not use Access as a database unless it is specifically
made to do so. It uses a proprietary format (.mpp). I don't know if
this is part of the problem preventing multiple undos.

 

[JackD]

Further, even when it uses an access backend, the changes are held in memory
until the file is saved.

 

[Greggy]

What they need is a litttle more competition.

Upgrade next year. According to Dieter's blog 2006 finally has multiple
undo.
Start thinking in advance about what else you would like. It took about 10
years for this request to make it through

--
-Jack ... For Microsoft Project information and macro examples visit
http://masamiki.com/project
or http://zo-d.com/blog/index.html
.

 

[JackD]

Go for it.

 

[Steve House [Project MVP]]

I don't know if MSP uses parts of the Jet (Access, Foxpro, VB) dbms engine
"under the hood" or not (I'd be surprised if it didn't, given that MSP
understands VBA and can save its files in Access data format) but almost all
databases I'm familiar with have similar behavior. One can undo changes
made to a given record while it's in memory for editing but once the record
pointer moves to a new record, the edited record is written to permanent
disk storage with all changes overwriting the original record in the
permanent file and no longer able to be undone. Most proggies that allow
multiple undo levels are editing to an image in memory and don't commit
changes to the actual permanent storage file until it is closed or otherwise
explicitly saved. But that strategy is just not practical with a database
table that potentially could have billions of records - they all read and
load either a single record at a time or at most a "page" consisting of a
relatively small handful of records. True, some allow for "transaction
processing" where edited records are written to a temporary file for later
updating of the main tables during a "commit edits" operation but even that
doesn't allow the familar, Word-like, step-by-step sequential undo - commit
or abandon is an all or nothing operation affecting all pending updates at
once.

 

[JackD]

I can't say you are wrong, at least not definitively, but the speculations
you guys are making are kind of suspect.
1) "given that MSP understands VBA" - Um... so does excel and word and visio
and ... This is no reason to suspect that Project uses a jet db back-end
2) "the edited record is written to permanent disk storage" - Do you think
that happens with Project? It doesn't. Changes aren't made to the project
file until it is saved. This is quite different from access or any other
database.
3) One of the "cures" for broken .mpp files is to send them to the database
and back. The data serializer cleans up the problems in the file. This
wouldn't be effective if the native file was a form of JET.

So, actually, I believe the reason that the number of undo's was limited to
1 is that the changes caused by a change to a task were rather difficult to
accurately reverse. Apparently this problem has been solved so it turns out
it wasn't impossible, just difficult.
All speculation on my part, so maybe I'm completely wrong.

 

[Steve House [Project MVP]]

Speculation on my part as well - was more discussing the general behavior of
databases.


--
Steve House [MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

I can't say you are wrong, at least not definitively, but the speculations
you guys are making are kind of suspect.
1) "given that MSP understands VBA" - Um... so does excel and word and
visio
and ... This is no reason to suspect that Project uses a jet db back-end
2) "the edited record is written to permanent disk storage" - Do you think
that happens with Project? It doesn't. Changes aren't made to the project
file until it is saved. This is quite different from access or any other
database.
3) One of the "cures" for broken .mpp files is to send them to the
database
and back. The data serializer cleans up the problems in the file. This
wouldn't be effective if the native file was a form of JET.

So, actually, I believe the reason that the number of undo's was limited
to
1 is that the changes caused by a change to a task were rather difficult
to
accurately reverse. Apparently this problem has been solved so it turns
out
it wasn't impossible, just difficult.
All speculation on my part, so maybe I'm completely wrong.

--
-Jack ... For Microsoft Project information and macro examples visit
http://masamiki.com/project
or http://zo-d.com/blog/index.html
.
"Steve House [Project MVP]" <[email protected]>
wrote
in message news:[email protected]...

I don't know if MSP uses parts of the Jet (Access, Foxpro, VB) dbms
engine
"under the hood" or not (I'd be surprised if it didn't, given that MSP
understands VBA and can save its files in Access data format) but almost all
databases I'm familiar with have similar behavior. One can undo changes
made to a given record while it's in memory for editing but once the record
pointer moves to a new record, the edited record is written to permanent
disk storage with all changes overwriting the original record in the
permanent file and no longer able to be undone. Most proggies that allow
multiple undo levels are editing to an image in memory and don't commit
changes to the actual permanent storage file until it is closed or otherwise
explicitly saved. But that strategy is just not practical with a
database
table that potentially could have billions of records - they all read and
load either a single record at a time or at most a "page" consisting of a
relatively small handful of records. True, some allow for "transaction
processing" where edited records are written to a temporary file for
later
updating of the main tables during a "commit edits" operation but even that
doesn't allow the familar, Word-like, step-by-step sequential undo - commit
or abandon is an all or nothing operation affecting all pending updates
at
once.