MS Project Professional – Work offline

Project Professional enables you to work on a project plan when you are not connected to Project Server. There are two ways of working offline from Project Server.

  • Offline unexpectedly: If your computer becomes unexpectedly disconnected from Project Server (such as during a power failure), you can continue to make changes to your project plan. The next time your computer is connected to Project Server, the changes you made will be synchronized to the server.
  • Save for sharing: You can also save a project in Project Server to the a .MPP file format. The project file can then be sent to team members using e-mail or by saving to a file server. Changes to the shared file can be synchronized with the project on Project Server.

Work on a project offline

Step 1: Check out a project

  1. Start Project Professional and connect to Project Server.
  2. On the File tab, click Open.
  3. In the Open dialog box, click Retrieve the list of all projects from Project Server.
    The Open dialog box will display a list of projects in Project Server.
  4. Click the project you want to open and click
  5. After the file opens, set Project to work offline from the server.
  6. On the File tab, click
  7. On the right, click Manage Accounts, and then click Work Offline.
  8. When you are done editing the project offline, you can close Project.

Keep in mind, that when you open Project Professional to work on the project offline in the future, you need to select the server to which it was initially saved, and then click Work Offline in the Login dialog box.

Note:  If you do not select the server to which the project file was initially saved, then you will not be able to open the project file.

Step 2: Synchronize changes with Project Server

  1. Start Project Professional.
  2. In the Login dialog box, select the server to which the offline file was initially connected. Do not click Work Offline.

Note:  If you do not select the server to which the offline file was initially connected, then you will not be able to open the file.

  1. On the File tab, click
  2. In the Open dialog box, double-click the project name to open it from the local cache.
  3. On the File tab, click
  4. When prompted to check in the file, click

Your project file is now synchronized with the version on the server.

Work Offline unexpectedly

If your computer becomes unexpectedly disconnected from Project Server (such as during a power failure), you can continue to make changes to your project plan. The next time your computer is connected to Project Server, the changes you made to the project will be synchronized to the server.

Do the following when you want to save your changes back to Project Server.

  1. Start Project Professional.
  2. In the Login dialog box, select the server to which the project was initially saved. Do not click Work

Note:  If you do not select the server to which the project was initially saved, then you will not be able to synchronize the project with Project Server.

Close Project Professional.
If you are prompted, save and check-in the project.

[Note]: Be aware when Project is taken offline, Timesheet and actual work might be lost as it might have been approved in PWA and might replace the data.

Thank you Keerthi for excellent write up on working with offline MS Project