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I use Altium Designer 18. When I open a project file (.PrjPCB), the asterisk ("*") appears next to the project name indicating that the project has been modified, but I haven't actually made any changes.

I've been using Altium for years, and I've always wondered about this. I'd really like to change this if possible, because I sometimes worry that I've somehow accidentally made changes to the project that I didn't intend.

EDIT: I'm aware that in some cases, Altium can't find the library files that are linked to the project and removes those from the project. This is not what's happening in this case. Often, when I open a project, and no library files are removed from the project, the project is still modified and (even if I don't make any changes), I'm asked if I want to save changes to the project when I close Altium.

Also am not making changes to any of the project files (.SchDoc files, .PcbDoc files, etc).

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    \$\begingroup\$ AFAIK Altium can very well integrate with many popular source control systems. That would be the best way to ensure you are not changing stuff accidentally. \$\endgroup\$
    – Eugene Sh.
    Commented Feb 19, 2019 at 19:23
  • \$\begingroup\$ If Altium is unable to find certain files (such as library files) on startup it will come up with a window saying xxxx.xxx could not be found and will be removed from the project. Are you getting any of these messages? If so, when the file is removed it modifies the project so it recognizes it as a change. \$\endgroup\$
    – DerStrom8
    Commented Feb 19, 2019 at 19:34
  • \$\begingroup\$ @EugeneSh. Thanks for your reply. I'm aware that Altium integrates with SVN and CVS. Is this what you're talking about? \$\endgroup\$
    – Danny
    Commented Feb 19, 2019 at 20:45
  • \$\begingroup\$ @DerStrom8 Thanks for your reply. I'm aware that if Altium can't find the library files that are associated with the project, the library files (and any other files that Altium can't find) will be removed from the project and that is certainly a change to the project file, this isn't what's happening. There are no files being removed from the project when I open it and Altium still seems to think that there are changes to the project that it needs to prompt me to ask if I want the changes saved. \$\endgroup\$
    – Danny
    Commented Feb 19, 2019 at 20:46
  • \$\begingroup\$ @Danny Yes, this is what I meant. \$\endgroup\$
    – Eugene Sh.
    Commented Feb 19, 2019 at 20:46

2 Answers 2

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It might be saving your project state (i.e. previous view/zoom and currently opened files in your project). I know several programs that do this including schematic capture, PCB layout, mechanical CAD, IDEs, and even spreadsheet software that liked to save which cells you were looking at and which cell your selector was on.

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This was driving me slightly nuts for a min, and I had some projects that would be "modified" as soon as Altium opened it and others which would behave fine.

I dug through the project parameters looking to see what was different.

I found something that fixed this problem for me, hopefully it helps you too. If you go into your Project Options, go to the 'Options' tab. There is a section for "Net Identifier Scope". When this was set to "Automatic", I had the issue with Altium falsely thinking I had modified the project file. When I changed this to either "Flat" or "Hierarchical", the issue went away.

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