Copy/Paste of long list of resources truncates list in MS Project

Lewis,

I don't quite understand how your 19 resources relate to accounting periods. Are you trying to do accounting months, like a 4-4-5 sequence? If so, Project has never provided that option, but it can be done with some VBA, I've done it.

It sounds like your 19 engineers is a perfect scenario for using group resources. Even if the engineers are broken down into separate types (e.g. electrical, mechanical, etc.), you can still set up engineering groups. For example, let's say you have 7 electrical engineers, 7 mechanical engineers and 5 system engineers. Create an Elect Engr resource with Max Units 700%, Mech Engr the same and Sys Engr at 500%. Now you only have 3 "resources" to assign to the tasks.

John

Lewis Collier,

You're welcome and thanks for the feedback.

Note that I said, "it is limited to 255 characters when attempting a copy/paste". That limitation does not apply if you use VBA. The Resource Names field itself does not have the limitation. For example the specification for Project 2016 states you can have 60,000,000 units per assignment, slightly more than your 19. However, the extra text fields (i.e. Text1 through Text30) are limited to 255 characters whereas the Notes field has no specified limitation.

Yes, using Assign Resources would require a little effort but it's hard to imagine you have a large number of tasks with that many resources. If you do, maybe the use of group resources (e.g. "carpenters" instead of Tom, ****, Harry, etc.) would make more sense.

John

John,

Thanks for clarifying my misunderstanding. 

This is a special case where I am doing accounting periods rather than normal tasks, thus the large list per task; I have 19 folks from engineering on each "task", which represents a four-week accounting period. Yes, normally I would not have the need for such a structure, but, you know how accountants are: they want things in their format :)

Thanks again for the clarifying remarks.

Lewis...

Lewis Collier,

You're welcome and thanks for the feedback.

Note that I said, "it is limited to 255 characters when attempting a copy/paste". That limitation does not apply if you use VBA. The Resource Names field itself does not have the limitation. For example the specification for Project 2016 states you can have 60,000,000 units per assignment, slightly more than your 19. However, the extra text fields (i.e. Text1 through Text30) are limited to 255 characters whereas the Notes field has no specified limitation.

Yes, using Assign Resources would require a little effort but it's hard to imagine you have a large number of tasks with that many resources. If you do, maybe the use of group resources (e.g. "carpenters" instead of Tom, ****, Harry, etc.) would make more sense.

John

Lewis Collier,

The Resource Names field is a text based field and like all other text based fields in Project, it is limited to 255 characters when attempting a copy/paste.

Here are a couple of options. Instead of trying to copy/paste all the resources from one task to another, use the Assign Resources window for the new task. That is better practice anyway.

The other option is to shorten the resource names so that when combined, the total number of characters is less than 255 characters.

Well actually, there is one other way, use VBA to copy the names.

Hope this helps.

John

John,

Thanks for the details of the limitation. I figured it was something like that. I still don't know how it can copy just the names that way but retain the other information for the names it does copy. This seems like elementary coding practice, though, to copy a list of items that way, but I understand the MS-Project is an old code base. Ugh.

But, wait, how does it actually store all the names in the first task if the limit is 255 chars?

Using the Assign resources window is not an option. That would require me to re-type all 19 resources, which is what I am trying to avoid by copying.

I did shorten the names to get past this.

Thanks for the reply.