Turning Off Automatic Calculation on Large Project Plans

[Carl Paul]

We have a number of large project plans with 2000+ separate tasks. On fast
workstations Project Pro takes 5 to 7 seconds to run the calculation engine
on these projects and on slow workstations it takes 14 to 17 seconds. With
automatic calculation turned on it seems that the calculation engine is
running very, very often, and for any large project plan changes are very
slow and painful… These plans still require a lot of development so this
situation is critical.

If I turn off automatic calculation as a test, the response times become
reasonable again, and Project Pro regains its ease of use that everyone is
accustomed to.

The essential issue is whether the PMO should formally recommend that PM’s
turn off automatic calculation for these large plans. This is a real double
bind because:

The calculation engine does NOT run automatically when you save a project to
Project Server. That implies that if a PM forgets to manually run calculation
before they save, the dates in PWA will be garbage.

However, the calculation engine does run automatically when you open a
project. This means that a PM using Project Pro cannot close a project, and
then open it again to check if he/she ran the calculation engine.

The only solution that I can think of is a macro that would fire on the save
event and force a calculation. Can anyone point me to such a macro ?…. Or
have another good solution?

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Carl --

One approach would be to ask each user to set calculation to Manual in their
Microsoft Project application and to leave it set to Manual. You could then
create the following macro in the Enterprise Global file:

Sub RecalculateAndSave()
CalculateAll
FileSave
FileClose
End Sub

You would probably also want to add a new toolbar to the Enterprise Global
file, with a button on the toolbar attached to the macro. You could teach
your PM's to click the button when they want to recalculate, save, and close
their project.

Also, when users want to recalculate their project while working on it
without closing it, you should teach them to press the F9 function key.

Just a couple thoughts. I'd be glad to hear the ideas of others as well.
Hope this helps.

 

[Gérard Ducouret]

Hi Carl and Dale,

To automate this calculation before the closing event, you could use this
auto-run macro :

Private Sub Project_BeforeClose(ByVal pj As Project)
MsgBox "You are closing : " & ActiveProject.Name 'Just for checking,
remove this line after a test
CalculateProject
FileSave
End Sub

Open the Enterprise Global. In the VBA Editor, copy this macro in the
"ThisProject" object, under VBAProject (Global......)

Gérard Ducouret

 

[Gérard Ducouret]

Carl,
I think that you would have to improve this procedure to give the user the
choice between Save or not...
Gérard Ducouret