Activy ID numbering again

you can change the number on teh excel sheet and ipmort it as an excel sheet. But i would not suggest you to do since it will create new activity but not delete the old one. So for project with 1700 activities if you change it in excel before you export, it will add another 1700 activities. If the change is uniform like adding a prefix or a suffix or divide by some constant number you can write a filter for it. Or you can only do it manually each acivity ID.

Hi,
I don’t know P3e/c. In P3.1 we use globle change or P3 batch.
Import/export to excel does not work, because you did not give P3 any information of the link between the old id & new id.

all,

I know its not an answer to the question, but I can’t help myself....

With unlimited activity codes available, the idea that the activity ID is other than a random number is hopelessly old fashioned.


THE ONLY THING REQUIRED OF AN ACTIVITY ID IN OUR NEW WORLD IS THAT IT DOES NOT CHANGE - or you can lose the baseline.

The order that activities are executed in should have NOTHING to do with the activity number - that’s just an illness you can catch from using Microsoft Project.

Sorry for the micro-rant, I’ll go and take my blood pressure pills and i will be fine.

I know that the order is not linked with the number

i just want a project more orginazed

Hi,

Very good David, I totally agree with the philosophy around numbering of ID’s etc and appreciate the dig at MSP.

However as I am the type of planner that likes to have a "nice looking plan", a bit of care should always be taken with the basics of a plan. Such mundane things as the way the ID’s look is I would consider as "important", i.e all same standard format, numbers of characters etc.

In this particular case, provided their is no base line, would be to retype in the ID’s. Exporting the data to Xcel would not help the situation as the ID’s still have to be retyped.

However if you feel you must change, when you export to Xcel and made your changes, try imporing to a new project. but you must also bring across all your logic, resources etc, all will need to given the new ID. This gets very messy and errors are easy to make.

My preferance would be leave well alone, and learn by the mistakes so as not repeated on the next project.

Regards

John

ALL,

May I enlighten you that, in MSP, you have the "UID" - Unique Identification number. It is a column that you can insert and is automatically controlled and incremented as you develop the project. It remains unique throughout the project, regardless of where you physically place the task, add, delete or move activities.

I think that your enragement is at the row ID number (the one that appears by default on the left of the screen).

James :-)

Abhijeet

I think if you learn how to use import properly, it can do the update for you.

And agree that the project ID is only a unique id no and you can assigne activity code call"ActID" and assign your new no and do whatever you want with the activity code. (But I am not suggest you do it that way)

Cheers

Alex

Hmmm. Everyone wants to tell you what you should do ....not answer the question.

1. Make a backup of your project - always do this before you do anything like this in P3e

2. Create a User defined field (Activity Code) with the new ActId. Sort using this User Defined Field

3. Make sure that there are no duplicates for the Activity Code - user defined field (to do this Excel export ActID, UDF AC and pivot table check)

4. If satisified, export in Excel ACTID Activity Description and Used Defined Activity Code). Save this for your emergency backup and also for mapping to baselines.

5. Make another backup of your project - always do this before you do anything like this in P3e.

6. Here goes nothing - Global change your Activity Id = User Defined Activity Code.

7. Do similar with Baselines

Good Luck - make a lot of backups to your project - every 1 hour at least. I hope that this answers your question.

Luiz,

I have never tried this on a detailed programme with thousands of activities. However, this is what I’ll do on P3 when tidying up a Master Programme (usually couple of hundred activities).

1. Make a backup - just in case!
2. Select all activities (CTRL + A).
3. Copy all activities.
4. Delete all activities.
5. Put filter to ‘No activities’.
6. Paste.
7. Select Auto increment and select External Relationships.
8. State base value and increment.
9. Reorganize now.

Done.

Regards,
Larry

Hi Luiz,

I read this thread a while back and keep saying to myself,
i better send this link to that guy that was wondering how to re-name all his activities ID etc.

--- here goes it and hope this helps Luiz,
- to make it more easier for you, i have created a FLASH movie for you to illustrate the efforts.

- i have read some suggestions others have given you too, it sounds good with the GLOBAL change, i agree with that,
but how do you get the data into the P3e in the first place to do your global change, -- and that is the part that they didnt mention to you. etc, get it?


====SOLUTION here========
1. Make a new UDF field in the activities level
2. use the import toool ot fill those UDF with the new number that you wanted.
3. do a global change.

--- keep in mind, once you get data into a UDF fields, you can use the global change to update any other fields in the P3e. (that is a powerful technique i found out).

=======
paste this in your IE:
http://web.dangcorp.com/vudang/video/update%20activity%20id%20using%20global%20change/update%20activity%20id%20using%20global%20change.html




Kind regards,

Vu Dang
http://www.dangcorp.com