Unable to open project plan

[Jennifer]

When trying to open a project plan I get a pop-up stating:

"Microsoft Project has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are
sorry for the inconvenience." It then goes on asking you to send report to
Microsoft. This is the only project plan that I cannot open the other open
fine.

Does anyone know what is causing this and how to open the project plan?

Thanks,
Jennifer

 

[Marc Soester]

Hi Jennifer,
Can you see the project plan in Project Web Access?

 

[Jennifer]

Marc,

I am able to view it in Web Access.

Jennifer

 

[Marc Soester]

Hi Jennifer,
I assume that you only encounter this problem with this one project. Or do
you have the same problem with other projects?
Is it a big project? I would probably export the project plan from PWA into
Excel and import this plan back into a new project and publish the project as
a new project, delete the old one and that should solve it. Not that this
solves the problem, but it may be a "work" around and allows you to continue
your work on the plan.
Alternatively I would check if only you encounter this problem with the
project. Do you have the ability to open the project on another workstation?
You may want to see if you also have the problem there. If not, then at least
you know that it may be your workstation. I hope that the suggestions will
bring you a little closer to resolving your problem
Marc

 

[Jennifer]

Marc,

The project manager for this particular project will return on Tues. and I
will see if he is able to open the project and if not request he follow your
suggestions.

This problem has occurred before with someone else so it is becoming all to
common with us. Do you know what is happening to cause this problem? Have
others experienced the same problem?

We seem to be having several different issues going on and are beginning to
question whether we should continue using Project Server. We had a company
come in and implement it for us back with Project Server 2002 and also
upgrade us to Project Server 2003.

Many thanks for your assistance. I will let you know the outcome of this
particular issue.

Jennifer

 

[Marc Soester]

Hi Jennifer,

I can imagine that it must be frustrating at times when issues like yours
arise without any apparent reason. All I can give you is our experience with
Project Server. We implement Project Server and found it to be a stable
environment. Have you made sure that Service Pack 1 for Server and Client is
installed ? You may want to check this as well.
You mentioned that another company upgraded your system from 2002 to 2003.
Have these problems only occurred after you upgraded? If this is the case,
you may want to contact your provider and see if they can help you. Please
let me know after your PM returns if he/she can access the plan. I hope PS
will not give you to much grief since it is a good server software.

 

[Jennifer]

Marc,

The project manager was not open the project plan either. We exported it in
PWA to Excel and then tried to import it into Project Pro 2003 and get the
following message:

"An unexpected problem occurred while opening the file. The file may be
damaged. Try using a backup copy."

We will now have our operations team retrieve a backup copy. This has
occurred in the past and when using a backup copy some information is always
lost which is not a good thing.

Again, I don't know what is causing the files to become damaged. Any idea?

Many thanks for your assistance,
Jennifer

 

[Gary L. Chefetz [MVP]]

Jennifer:

In our experience, there's almost always a good explanation when problems
occur repeatedly. Typically user-induced corruption by using the system
incorrectly. We'd have to examine your usage behaviors to determine a cause.

--


Gary L. Chefetz, MVP
"We wrote the books on Project Server"
http://www.msprojectexperts.com

For Project Server FAQs visit
http://www.projectserverexperts.com

For Project FAQs visit
http://www.mvps.org/project

 

[Jennifer]

Thanks Gary. We are looking into obtaining help from Microsoft to see if we
can find out what is causing the issues and then have them come in to work
with us proactively.

Jennifer