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schnerrific's avatar
schnerrific
Copper Contributor
Nov 03, 2023

Detailed question about comparison of 2 Microsoft Project files

Hi there,   I'm very clear on how to perform a comparison of two Microsoft Project files which share an ancestry (e.g. you've created a project, some changes occur over a month, and then you compar...
schnerrific's avatar
schnerrific
Copper Contributor
Nov 05, 2023

John-project thanks for your answer, you clearly know your stuff so I'm keen to hear more! It's interesting that you say it is the 'Unique ID' which Microsoft uses as I have two files that appear to be identical (same Unique IDs, task names and dates) as I generated both of them from the same macro.  However unless I'm misunderstanding something, Microsoft's compare utility highlights them as being entirely different. i.e. shows all of the rows of file A with negative signs on the left, followed by all of the rows of file B with positive signs on the left.

 

If you can think of anything else I should be considering please let me know.

 

Would be very interested to know more about the macro you wrote as perhaps that is a path I need to go down.

schnerrific's avatar
schnerrific
Copper Contributor
Nov 05, 2023
I actually just realised that even though in the source files (file A and B) the Unique IDs are the same (number 1-400) when I displayed Unique ID in the comparison view it had the numbers going up to 800 so I'm not sure what to make of that...
  • schnerrific's avatar
    schnerrific
    Copper Contributor
    Nov 05, 2023
    After some more googling, I'm starting to wonder if it is actually the GUID that is the factor. As I can see that column has different values in the two files. So I'll explore that to see if it helps.
    • John-project's avatar
      John-project
      Silver Contributor
      Nov 05, 2023

      schnerrific

      I've never tried to run a comparison on two files that were generated by code. By default they would not be "genetically" related which is the basis for comparison.

       

      The original Compare Projects utility did use the Unique ID as the reference. However, it had some issues and it wasn't until (I believe) release of Project 2010 that the utility was finally "fixed". It is possible that it now uses the GUID as the reference, I don't know.

       

      Since you are trying to compare two files generated by a macro you will most likely need to create your own unique reference so the files can be compared, and write your own compare macro like I did many years ago.

       

      Good luck.

      John

  • schnerrific's avatar
    schnerrific
    Copper Contributor
    Nov 05, 2023
    I think I may have answered my own question for that last comment. I assume in the act of creating a comparison file (effectively a master project) it starts its Unique IDs from scratch thus leading to the ids going up to 800.

    However I am still in the unique positions where if I take one of my files, slightly modify a date, and compare, the comparison report successfully shows it. Yet if I take my two 'seemingly identical' files generated from a macro, and slightly modify one, the comparison report thinks it is an entirely different Project and shows the whole file as being different. Help!

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