By Florentina Stirbu
Item numbers in a Vault must be unique. If a user tries to create a new item or rename a current item to a number that already exists, the error below will come up:
However, upon searching the Vault for the desired item number, no results are found. The search will only list items with their current names, not historical ones. If any item in the vault has one or more older versions using an item number, that number is unavailable until these versions are purged or the item that had this number in the past is deleted.
To identify the item that had a specific number in the past, a user can edit the Shortcuts.xml file in:
C:\Users\Username\AppData\Roaming\Autodesk\VaultCommon\Servers\Services_Security_xx_xx_xxxx\Servername\Vaults\Vaultname\Objects
Once the item has been identified, a purge operation could help remove the historical versions that use the item number needed. The purge operation cannot target these versions specifically (the purge will follow the lifecycle settings), so in cases where one of these versions cannot be purged (i.e. a released version), the only solution is to delete the item or just allocate a different item number.
Below is a video showing how to identify the item using the Shortcuts.xml: