Issue with SIMS reports

[sluggster66]

Hi all

 

Bear with me as u don't have much experience with SIMS!!!

 

Sims individual reports have been running fine for the past year or so. Then for no reason (that I can see) all the created report templates have failed to run correctly.

 

When a report is now run the links don't pull down the required data. If you fill the links back in manually the data is then pulled down.

 

All office settings are correct.

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks in advance.

[DavidLong]

Think I have had something similar in the past when I have re built my computer and then gone in to edit a template after which it all goes out of line and puts the data in the wrong rows.

 

I think it was something to do with the spell checking options and specifically "check spelling as I type" option had to be disabled in word and then any corrupted templates remade.

[PhilNeal]

Have you virtualised the server or changed its settings? Most performance issues come down to virtualised servers not giving sufficient resources to SQL.

[LosOjos]

@sluggster66 - this is an issue that hits us all eventually, fortunately it's usually relatively simple to fix (though I couldn't tell you the cause)

 

Clone the template, then open the Word Template and select 'Verify Template'. Do not save the template yet. Hit close, then you'll be prompted to save the document, now select to save. Back in SIMS, save the template and test it again - nine times out of ten, this will fix it.

 

These days, I never press save in Word, I always wait for it to prompt me when I try to close the document; this has greatly reduced the occurrence of this issue.

 

If that doesn't work, open the original template and then choose 'Save As' to save it as a Word Doc somewhere you can find it again. Then create a new template in SIMS, open it for editing and copy the contents of the previously saved Word doc in to the new template. It's worth then going through the routine described above too.

[PhilNeal]

Sorry about my addition to the thread - I miss read yours.

[Ecclesbury]

If it helps this issue hit us the hardest when we moved to Office 2010 (from 2003)

 

What LosOjos says above works for us, but it is very frustrating and can be hit and miss at times (especially with big templates.) I basically just keep trying different combinations of saves/verify template open/re-open until something sticks! LosOjos' specific combo above is definitely the one I have the most success with but it isn't fool proof. Be patient!

[tombry]

I have my own way of avoiding it - but it is an absolute ridiculous process.

 

Design report template.

 

Save it

 

Open it, choose which students I want to generate it for, select them again in the individual report page, edit template.

 

Save template (I actually use the save icon)

 

Save Individual Report in SIMS

 

Immediately export

 

Convert all XML to PDF for review.

 

I haven't had a single issue since I started doing it this way - what amuses me is that it has no issue uploading them to the DMS - you don't have to do anything special there - only to export/print them.

 

I haven't printed them straight from SIMS in over a year and a half though - all PDF, then send that to the printer if I need paper copies.

[PhilNeal]

The problem is normally associated with having different versions of Word. The older versions use a binary template. Don't mix old and new versions of Word when editing templates.

[LosOjos]

The problem is normally associated with having different versions of Word. The older versions use a binary template. Don't mix old and new versions of Word when editing templates.

 

Not IME Phil (and I only say this in case it helps debug the problem, not simply to argue). I've experienced this in Word 2000/2007/2010, in various combinations i.e. template created in one version and run in the same, created in one run in different, PC only ever had that version, PC has been updated from previous versions.

 

It's never seemed to make a difference which version of Word is used, except that 2010 seems to suffer the issue more regularly than earlier versions IME.

[vikpaw]

Personally i blame the macros not functioning correctly, or at least not triggering as they should.

[PhilNeal]

We have done a lot of work on this - mixing Word versions is heavily implicated. The older versions have binary templates which are not handled properly by the newer versions.

[Steven_Cleaver]

@PhilNeal I sort of Partly agree with Phil but also think there is something else going on, we moved from Office 2003 to 2010 a couple of years ago and did notice some issues with the old templates although some seemed fine and others we just couldn't get to work so we sort of used LosOjos method which fixed most of these had to recreate these where we just couldn't get them to work. We have been running Office 2010 for around 3/4 years now so all Templates should have and were working fine after the initial issues we had when changing when we changed Office. Over the Summer though we have completely re-vamped our analysis and reporting systems and this meant again changing a lot of the Reporting Templates where we again hit this issue of the reports not displaying correctly and again used the same method as LosOjos when we were altering in linked data which fixed most but still had to recreate some completely so not sure it is just the differences between the versions of Office alone.

[Ecclesbury]

Isn't the standard individual report template saved in comparability mode, so essentially a pre 2003 binary file?

 

Although we use Word 2010 I have always just cloned individual reports and so every report template is the same version that is has always been in (.doc). Does this mean that I can actually save an individual report template in .docx format?

 

Phil when we say we shouldn't mix versions...what is the recommended approach then? Should all individual report templates be .doc or .docx? If using .doc does it even matter which version of Word is actually installed? Although the problems we had became worse when we upgraded to Word 2010 we didn't change our template files to .docx.

[Ecclesbury]

The problem is normally associated with having different versions of Word. The older versions use a binary template. Don't mix old and new versions of Word when editing templates.

 

Apologies for my naivety but what do you mean by mixing old and new versions of word? Do you mean don't use old file formats with new versions of word? Or to be more specific don't use .doc templates if you have Word 2007 or higher installed on your machine?

 

So, reading between the lines is the suggested approach to save all individual report templates in .docx format if you use Word 2007 or higher?

 

Sorry for going on, I would love to resolve this issue for good!

Edited November 22, 2014 by Ecclesbury

[PhilNeal]

I believe it is caused when a template created in an old version of Word is then modified by a newer version and then modified by the older version. Something goes wrong with the tags and they become unrecognisable.

If the template is recreated in the new version of Word and never edited with an old one we don't see the problem. I think its related to the change of template from binary to XML.

[HughR]

Ok, if this is the issue where instead of the Student Data appearing, it shows the mailmerge tag instead. There's a really simple way of correcting it:

 

First, edit your report, Save it in the word document (the quick save icon is fine). Close the document.

Next, Save in the SIMS Individual Report page.

Then, reopen the document (don't make any changes) save again (quicksave) close document.

Finally save in SIMS Individual Report page.

 

Basically if you do a double save every time you make a change to the document, this appears to fix the problem - certainly works for me.

[Ecclesbury]

Very sorry to dredge this one up again but I just can't get my head round it.

@PhilNeal says that this problem is caused by mixing word versions but I can't see how that bit of information helps me?

 

Does anyone know where the standard XML template lives? I assume somewhere on the local C drive. As far as I can tell this standard template is in the 'Word 2003 XML Document' format. If I create a new individual report and try to save the template in any other format (such as Word XML document or Macro Enabled Document) SIMS crashes when trying to generate the report.

 

To be honest I don't really understand what happens with these individual report templates since saving the templates seems to create a temporary local copy...so where is the original template? S Drive?

@PhilNeal just to be clear are you saying that if we are using Office 2010 then there is no way round this problem since we will always be mixing versions by definition since the standard template is in 2003 format? Or to put it another way, how do I change the standard template to be in a format compatabile with Office 2010?

 

Thanks.

 

P.s. I've currently got a template with this issue and NONE of the usual techniques work including all those posted on this thread and HughR's latest offering. It is immensely frustrating.

[Ecclesbury]

OK, interesting development. I noticed that the point in the template that the tags started to fail happened to be where result tags in the template were breaking across a page. Just for a lark I tried amending my table so that rows wouldn't break across the page and presto chango it worked!

 

One of the most frustrating things about this problem though is how do we know if that was actually the problem. Perhaps just making a change kick started the macros and it was coincidence. I feel like one of Skinner's Pigeons.

[tombry]

I'm not sure it's the rows across pages either - I went through and re-designed most of our reports a little over a year ago, and one of the tips I had at the time was to set it so rows couldn't split across pages - I still have it happen.

 

Honestly though, I feel like the many workarounds just add to the excitement of generating reports.

 

Like my other favorite "feature" where the clicks register before the redraw has finished.

[Ecclesbury]

I think you're right, it seems to me that there are just a bucket load of little bugs that will cause the macros to fail each with a slightly different workaround and it is hard to spot which bug is causing the current issue, so you just have to try everything and keep adding to your repertoire of fixes (and then forgetting them by the time it happens again)

 

I would hope that Capita are developing a new base template which is compatible with new versions of Word. In fact, are Capita even supporting Office 2003? I thought they only supported the latest 2 releases?

[Scotbynature]

No sure if it helps but one we found was if it didn't pull the information through it was because they were underlined due to an unknown spelling. I added the word to the dictionary and saved the report. When we run it the information was pulled through.