Project supports opening from and saving to the file format used by Project 2007. A project created in Project 2016 can be opened in Project 2013 or Project 2010 without saving the project to a different format. Project 2010, Project 2013, and Project 2016 all use the same file format. From there you can click the File tab and click the Save As tab in the Backstage, and save the backed up project file as an MPP file in place of the corrupted project.The standard file format for a project which uses the. Select the backup copy of your project file and then click the Open button. In the Open dialog, you will now see the backup project, such as shown in Figure 4. In the lower right corner of the Open dialog, click the file type pick list, which displays Projects (*.mpp) as the default file type, and then select the All Files (*.*) option. In the Open dialog, navigate to the folder where you store your projects and their accompanying backed up projects. On the Open page, click the Browse button. To do this, click the File tab and then click the Open tab in the Backstage. In a situation like this, you should open the backup file instead. Suppose that you attempt to open your original project file, but that Microsoft Project can no longer open the file because it has become corrupted. At the bottom of the Save As dialog, click the Tools pick list button and select the General Options item on the pick list, as shown in Figure 1.įigure 3: Backup project file with BAK file extension Opening a Backed Up Project In the Save As dialog, navigate to the folder from which you opened the MPP file. On the Save As page, click the Browse button. Click the File tab and then click the Save As tab in the Backstage. To enable the backup functionality in Microsoft Project, open any project saved as an MPP file. The backup function is not for people who use Microsoft Project with Project Online or Microsoft Project Server. Warning: The backup function is for people who only use the Microsoft Project desktop application, and who save their projects as MPP files. So, allow me to show you how to enable the backup function in Microsoft Project. For the user in question, perhaps a backup copy of his project would have saved the day.

When enabled, Microsoft Project will automatically create and maintain a backup copy of each of your projects. The next morning it dawned on me that Microsoft Project has a built-in “backup” function. It appears that the project file was corrupted, which was why he could no longer open it. Several of us tried to help the user, but to no avail.

He asked us what he needed to do to reopen this project file successfully. A user posted a question some time ago in one of the user forums, stating that he has been working with a Microsoft Project file, and then recently could no longer open the MPP file.

Ms project file extension