A problem that has been around for a little while has ben when re-opening a PivotTable that was created from the OLAP templates within the Business Intelligence (BI) Center within Project Web App (PWA) you will see an error – We found a problem with some content in ‘NameofSpreadsheet.xlsx’. Do you want us to try to recover as much as we can? If you trust the source of this workbook, click Yes.  As much as we could recover was generally nothing – perhaps some text remained but the PivotTable was gone…

Clicking Yes would bring up a second dialog title Repairs to ‘NameofSpreadsheet.xlsx’ containing the text something like:

Removed Part: /xl/pivotCache/pivotCacheDefinition1.xml part with XML error.  (PivotTable cache) Load error. Line 2, column 0.
Removed Feature: PivotTable report from /xl/pivotTables/pivotTable1.xml part (PivotTable view)

This has been fixed by an Excel update – and as near as I can tell version 15.0.4517.1001 will get you past this issue.  This can be found via KB 2817339 - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2817339/en-us.

Also please note that the bad stuff appears to happen on save – so if a saved xlsx is already giving this error then a patched Excel won’t recover it – but just allow you to save a new one that won’t get corrupted.

If you use click 2 run then you will likely already have been patched to this level or beyond.

This also applies to Project Server 2013, but as the biggest impact is probably to Odata and this is likely to be used more in a Project Online environment I’ve tagged the title with Project Online.  Thanks to Chris Slowinski for identifying this Odata issue and alerting us via a forum posting.

If you create a project level custom field and use certain terms they can lead to issues with the Odata feed of the Project table, and you can get an error in Excel like the following, reading “We couldn’t get data from the Data Model. Here’s the error message we got: The content of the data feed is not valid for an Atom feed.”

If you looked at the feed in a browser (with a Url something like http://servername/pwa/_api/ProjectData/Projects then the error would be “An error occurred while processing this request”.  Be careful – you can also get the same error with simple typos in the Url – so just getting that error may not mean you have used a reserved name in a customer field.  The most common custom field we have seen used that hits this issue is Project ID, and as the Odata feed will also remove spaces you will see the same issue with ProjectID.  Another known field to run into this is Project Owner ID, or ProjectOwnerID (or other variations).  I suspect there could be others, and potentially others at other levels such as task and resource may affect access to tables related to those entities.

There are a few other names that cause the other problem described in the title, but which don’t give the Odata error, and these are:

• Start Date
• Description
• Project Name

You will also see the issue with local language versions, such as Descripción del Proyecto in Spanish.

This issue occurs when you are creating projects from list items – so for example you have your list of potential projects in a list, then you select one of the items in the list and click Create Project.  In this example I am aiming to create a new project called Project Idea 2.  Don’t confuse this scenario with making a project from the full list – here we are only using one list item – this isn’t sync tasks to project.. 

Usually you would get a dialog to map your list fields to the project fields and instead you get an error:

For Project Online you should click the TECHINCAL DETAILS link and then open a support incident giving us the correlation ID and date and time (or just check if you are using a reserved word in your custom fields – and change it) – and for on-premises installations you could check the ULS logs yourself and would likely see something like the following:

07/24/2013 07:11:52.39    w3wp.exe (0x2494)    0x1914    SharePoint Foundation    Runtime    tkau    Unexpected    System.ArgumentException: An item with the same key has already been added.    at System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary`2.Insert(TKey key, TValue value, Boolean add)     at System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary`2.Add(TKey key, TValue value)     at Microsoft.Office.Project.PWA.ApplicationPages.PwaSettings.FillPSFields()     at Microsoft.Office.Project.PWA.ApplicationPages.PwaSettings.Initialize()     at Microsoft.Office.Project.PWA.ApplicationPages.PwaSettings..ctor(PwaSettingsDlg dlg)     at Microsoft.Office.Project.PWA.ApplicationPages.PwaSettingsDlg.OnInit(EventArgs e)     at System.Web.UI.Control.InitRecursive(Control namingContainer)     at System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestMain(Boolean includeStagesBeforeAsyncPoint, Boolean includeStagesAfterAsyncPoint)    fb8964fc-6af4-e211-940b-00155d745a02

The fix is pretty straightforward as the custom field name is editable – just make it different from our reserved words and all will be good.  We should be updating our documentation to cover these reserved words.  Thanks to Sriram and Aik for their work in identifying this issue.

I’ve updated the original blog post with this information – but in case you just get the RSS feed which had an error I wanted to make sure this got out there…

While I was putting together an internal e-mail on the ‘birth’ of SP2, weighing in at 450MB, playing on the recent big news from my homeland, I noticed that the SharePoint 2010 SP2 was actually smaller than the Project Server one (437 MB) – even though the Project one, was described in KB2687452 as being included in the SharePoint one – KB2687453 – whereas in fact the Project one is a roll-up (as the title of the download infers) and contains the SharePoint SP2.  Might have missed this for a couple of days without the Royal birth…Sorry for the confusion – we are getting the KB corrected. 

And if you think the whole baby reference is just a ploy to get search hits then if that were the case I’d have made some lame excuse to mention the Kardashians as well (whoever they are).

I am pleased to announce the arrival of Service Pack 2 (SP2) for Project 2010, Project Server 2010 and of course SharePoint Server 2010.  The SharePoint Server 2010 SP2 also Project Server 2010 SP2, so no need to load both if you have a SharePoint + Project farm – just load the SharePoint Server 2010 SP2.  *** Update - Looking at the file sizes and descriptions - I suspect the note on the Project Server SP2 KB article is incorrect and should read that 2687452 Includes 2687453 - and not the other way around - so if you have SharePoint and Project Server you just need the Project Server 2010 SP2 - 2687452 ***.

The Service Packs contain all cumulative fixes since SP1, starting with the June 2011 Cumulative Update (CU) and the July 2011 Public Update (PU) all the way through to the April 2013 CU and May 2013 PU.  The Service Packs also contain previously unreleased fixes.  In addition to general product fixes, these fixes include improvements in stability, performance, and security.The complete list of fixes is available here.

The KB articles and downloads can be found at the following links, and the downloads are also available via the Microsoft Update website.

Project 2010 Service Pack 2 - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2687457 – with full technical details of the client products at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2687523/en-us 

Downloads – x86 – x64

Project Server 2010 Service Pack 2 - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2687452

Download - Download the Microsoft Project Server 2010 Service Pack 2 package now

SharePoint Server 2010 Service Pack 2 - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2687453 – with full technical details for the server products at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2687524

Download - Download the Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 Service Pack 2 package now 

For other Office and Sharepoint SP2 packages please visit http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2687521/

Our User Assistance stars have just posted some brand new content to help new users to Project Online.  The new Project Online getting started articles can be found at http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/project-server-help/get-started-with-project-online-HA102858793.aspx and walks you through the Project Online sign-up, adding your people and creating projects.  Thanks Sonia and all the folks in the review cycle who helped make this happen!

*** Update 10/6/2014 - new link http://aka.ms/ProjectOnlineGetStarted and the page doesn't look quite like that any more... ***