Project Server 2010 – Copying a Project Detail Page

BY: Collin Quiring

Recently an associate created a Project Detail Page (PDP) that had a large number of fields in it.  He added the appropriate custom and standard project fields (about 25) to the PDP knowing that he would have to create a very similar PDP immediately afterwards.  The second PDP had to have all of the fields of the first one plus an additional number of fields (about 10 more for a total of 35).  And, he didn’t want to have to recreate the second PDP from scratch.

When he asked how to copy the PDP I told him it was relatively easy in that he would just go to the Server Settings and Project Detail Pages page which lists all the PDP’s and then select the one he wanted and click on the Download a Copy, save it with a new file name and then use the Upload Document button and there it is – your new PDP!

Well, not so fast.  What we just copied was really the Name, Display Name, Page Type and it wants me to add my own Description.  That might be nice but what we needed in this case was for the 25 fields that he had added in the first PDP that we THOUGHT we were copying to the new PDP.  The problem is that the custom fields do NOT copy along with the PDP.  The 25 fields that we really wanted to copy are in the web part that were within the first PDP.

After some Bing-ing and Google-ing I didn’t discover a solution so I present our solution (which, you need to remember, is free so you might be getting what you paid for here! J  )

A SharePoint expert might have had a more elegant method to solve the problem but here is how we did it.

1. From the Project Detail Pages – All Documents screen we selected the first PDP to open that page with the 25 fields.
2. We selected the Export option on that page and saved the web part.
3. We then went back to the Project Detail Pages – All Documents screen and selected the new PDP page – which opened a totally blank screen.
4. On the new blank PDP we selected Site Actions – Edit Page.
5. We then selected Add a Web Part
6. At the bottom left of the screen under that Categories scroll bar is the Upload a Web Part option.
7. We selected the web part that we just created (in step 2 above).
8. Then, right next to the Browse button is the Upload button which we selected.
9. Selecting Upload kicked us back to the Add a Web Part again and we had to select it again to get right back to the Categories options in the Edit Page.
10. In the Categories options at the top of the list is now an option for Imported Web Parts.
11. When selecting that Category the Web Part now shows up that we just uploaded.
12. We then selected that web part and clicked on Add
13. Then we added the10 new fields and we were done!
14. That’s it, a lucky thirteen “simple” steps to make the original 25 fields available in a new PDP so that we didn’t have to retype them.

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