optimising space used by MPD files

[Stuart Summerville]

Hi all,

I'm after a method by which I can optimise the space used by MPD files
with MSP.

Having run various MPP files for some time, that only ever grew to a few
MB, I'm rather annoyed that these same projects converted to MPD files a
few months ago have now reached as high as 24MB.

Saving such an MPD as a new file sees it back to ~ 3MB so obviously the
inefficiency is fairly extreme.

Saving as a new file is no good as we have external systems that then
see the contents as a whole new project (some indexes or internal ID's
must be re-initialised in the process).

I've read on this ng that loading the MPD into MS Access allows one to
do a DB compress operation - indeed this does seem to work, but I'm
rather nervous as to any repercussions of this method.

I've had google sessions on several occasions trying to find SOME MPD
maintenance info out there, but sofar no luck.

Any tips?

Stu.

 

[Jim Aksel]

Link below, select FAQ, read FAQ#43 on file corruption and bloat.
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Jim
It''s software; it''s not allowed to win.

Visit http://project.mvps.org/ for FAQs and more information
about Microsoft Project

 

[Stuart Summerville]

Hmmm, I guess I'm the only one in this ng that uses the MPD file
format... :|

Stu.

 

[Stuart Summerville]

Hi Jim,

Sorry I missed your post about this, pointing me to the FAQ. For some
reason my usenet server doesn't have your post, though I can (now) see
it via MS' web-based newsgroup front-end.

I've read the ideas suggested in the FAQ...

Method 1 (save-after-open): Doesn't seem to work with MPD files.
Method 2 (save to MPD): already there...
Method 3 (save to XML): as per my 4th para in my original post, this
breaks our external app that is accessing the DB directly (even if saved
to the same filename).
Method 4 (setup new file): refer Method 3 above.
Method 5 (recreate using VBA): Hmm...I have no idea how to do this.

Even after a week or so using a MDB compressed from 36MB back to ~ 5MB,
its now back to 14MB again.

I'm amazed how little documentation there is about real-world use of MPD
format!

Stu.