File size after deleting tasks (2003/SP3)

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I’m just curious – I though I would re-use a project file rather than create a new one for each project. Some projects may have several thousand tasks and some may only have a fraction of that.

I’ve noticed that even if I delete tasks the file size stays the same. How do you reduce the file size if tasks are removed?

Kevin

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I would check for prior baselines and interim plans that may still be saved in memory.

Try selecting Tools, Tracking, Clear Baseline (and interim plan as well) to clear them and then try re-saving the project.

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Thanks for the reply Gary. I tried your suggestion and it made no difference.

Just an additional note, I created the .mpp file by importing task data from a SQL Server table I made for this purpose. The fields I’m importing to are ID, Task Name, Text1, Text2, Text3, Text4, Text5, Date1, Date2, Resource Names, % Complete, Duration, Start, and Predeccesors.

Any other ideas?

Kevin

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You might doing a Save As. Project does not actually delete records when you delete a task, resource, etc. The record is kept in the file to speed up saves. If you do a Save As, close the file, re-open the file, and then another Save As, it will get rid of these “Deleted” records. Closing the file in between is important or the “Deleted” records keep getting saved in the new version. Solution from Matt Parks.

Carla

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I like Carla’s suggestion. FWIW, in the past in some of my “brain dead” moments, I have had similar issues. However, the file on my local drive never changed size no matter what changes I did. That is because I thought I was on the local drive when I was actually working off of the network. Let me know if Carla’s suggestion works.

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Save As does reduce the file. I found that doing it a second time did not reduce the size further. If I understand correctly the suggestion was to do it twice.

Here are the details of my test –

Tasks in original file – 1,777
Size of original file – 1,912 KB
Deleted 777 tasks leaving 1,000 (56% of 1,777)
Size of new file after Save As – 1,183 KB (62% of 1,912 KB)

This works but I wish there was another way. Oh well, thanks for the suggestion.

Kevin

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I did some more testing and found a couple of things that made a significant difference.
Here are the steps I took –

1 – I deleted all the tasks.
2 – I switched to the Resources Sheet and deleted all the resources. (This is populated even though I’m only specifying that tasks are being imported.)
3 – I saved the .mpp file. (I only saved it, I did not do a save as.)
4 – I closed the .mpp file.
5 – I re-opened the .mpp file
6 – I switched from the Resources Sheet (active sheet when first saved) to the Gantt Chart.
7 – I saved and closed the file.

The steps above reduced a file originally containing 1,913 tasks from 2,312 KB to 304 KB!

Any more thoughts?

Kevin

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