How to prevent Unreal from creating copies of projects?

I have a custom source build that I’ve built on one computer and then distributed it over our network to a few other computers. Whenever I open the same project on a different computer with the same build of the engine, the engine always asks to make a copy. Is there a way to avoid this?

Hi Jordan,

Does this happen every time you open the project on any one given computer, or only the first time that you open it there?

I think I solved the issue. It looks like the project file was getting committed and everytime I opened the project, it would ask me again to open a copy of a project I had already converted. Is there a way to permanently disable that? In the event the project file was comitted, it still would not see it as a different project?

Hi Jordan,

What is likely happening here is that the Engine Association for project that is being committed to the repository does not match the value for the Engine on the computer you are currently opening it on. This can happen with custom Engine builds distributed across a network. Even though the Engines are functionally identical, they each would have their own identifier.

To avoid having to make a copy every time you sync the project on a different computer, you may want to right-click the .uproject file before opening it and select the Switch Unreal Engine version option and make sure it is set to the Engine on the computer you are working on. Once that is done, you should be able to open the project without being prompted to make a copy.