Unable to save SQL Server maintenance plan

Question

We have a maintenance plan for backing up databases and I need to change the destination filepath.

When I open the plan in SSMS and make the changes then hit save, I get a message that says

You are about to save maintenance plan "mtpblah" in a new format. Earlier versions of SQL Server Tools do not support the new format. However, the newly formatted Maintenance Plans will not have any issues in execution. Would you like to save?

When I click OK a dialogue with a big red cross and the message No description found pops up. If I click OK, this closes the dialogue box and takes me back to my unsaved maintenance plan.

The maintenance plan was created by my predecessor so I'm not sure what version of SQL Server it was created in, but probably at least one previous to our current version of SQL Server 2012.

I am using SSMS 2016, which according to Microsoft works with all supported versions of SQL Server. Has anyone else hit this problem and have a solution?

Answer 1

You're right. The SSMS 2016 works on SQL Server 2012. However, there's a known issue on SSMS 2016 when saving a maintenance plan. what version of SSMS 2016 are you using? The latest release is SSMS 16.5.

options you may want to try:

1. You might want to check if the SSMS 16.5 can edit/save your maintenance plan.
   • Check if you have the latest SSMS installed: Go to SSMS -> Help
   • SSMS version should be at version 13.0.16000.28 That's version 16.5
2. Since you are working on SQL Server 2012, you may want to edit/save it using SSMS 2012. SSMS 2012 is installed here: C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Microsoft SQL Server\\110\\Tools\\Binn\\ManagementStudio\\Ssms.exe

Bonus: if you want to optimize your maintenance plan, consider custom maintenance plan. I would highly recommend Ola Hallengren Maintenance Solution . This is much better than the built-in Maintenance Plan (includes db backup, index maintenance, integrity check of db, and more). not to mention, it is FREE. If you decide to use the free tool, just make sure you TEST, TEST, TEST before deploying to production.