Everything about Project Management and Microsoft EPM

Recently one of our clients asked me about to take a project offline and use it when they are not connected to the corporate network. Off the top of my head I could not remember how to do it. So I thought I would put it up here for the next time someone asked me how to take a project offline.

Before I start off one thing to bear in mind is that taking a project offline is not always a good thing, quiet often someone checks out a project and forgets to check it back in thereby locking the project and preventing anyone else from accessing the project.

The first thing that you need to do is connect to the server from Microsoft Project

Then open the project from the server

In the Open dialog box make sure you double click on Retrieve the list of all projects from Project Server.

This will show you a list of all the projects on the server. Select the project you want to take offline and double click the project name.

Once the project is open. In the status bar at the bottom of the window in the status bar you will the status set to Connected.

Click on Connected and you will be shown two options, Click on the Work Offline option.

This will take you offline and change the status to Offline.

Your project is now offline. You can continue to work on you project. Once you are done you can close the project. Just remember to to make sure the Save option and the Keep project checked out options are selected in the Close dialog box.

Now that you have taken the project offline if you want to open the project and work on it all you will have to do is open Microsoft Project and make sure that you select the Work Offline option by clicking on the Work Offline button in the login dialog box

Once you have Microsoft Project open go to File > Open. You will be shown a list of all the projects you have taken offline.

Open the project and continue working as normal.

When you want to send the changed you made to the server click on the offline link at the bottom of the Microsoft Project window. Select the option to Connect to Server.

The status will be set to Disconnected till you get connected to the server. Once the connection is completed the status will change to Connected.

You can now work normally as you would when you are connected to the server. Just make sure that you check-in the project other wise no one else will be able to access the file.