[sims] SIMS .net / Office 2010

[stuartp44]

I have created this post as i havnt seen much support for the two packages together.

 

If anyone is having the fun and joy that we are having at the moment with SIMS .net and Microsoft Office 2010 please post your tweaks and fixes for SIMS issues.

[Max_Power]

What issues are you having? We havent had any to speak of yet (touch wood)

[stuartp44]

If you have Microsoft Office 2010 and your users are receiving "Macros Disabled" message, you can use Group policy to change this. If you have allready installed the Office 2010 ADM files to your group polcy go on, if you have please visit Download Details - Microsoft Download Center - Office 2010 Administrative Templates and OCT and follow this Adding New Administrative Templates to a GPO. Goto Microsoft Office 2010 GPO > Security Settings > Automation Secruity > Macros Enabled (Default).

[stuartp44]

Its not a issue just thought i would create a post for my fixes/tweaks that i have found and others. Edited September 15, 2011 by stuartp44

[Sylv3r]

Touchwood everything regarding SIMS and Office 2010 is working without any problems.

[matt40k]

Yer, seems to be ok now it's support, it's like Capita has included all the require changes, shock horror!!

 

Only thing is to make sure your machine is Windows Update'd and the macro settings are set (like any version of Office)

[vikpaw]

Anybody having trouble running Wordlist / (mailmerge) type reports? Especially, running the same report twice or more in a row. Quite a few have had that, recently mentioned in a thread to do with roaming profiles, so not technically an Office 2010 thing, but does affect Win XP and Win 7. No known workarounds just yet, short of logging off and back on again.

[Steven_Cleaver]

We have just updated to Office 2010 and had an issue with individual reports designed in Office 2003, if we changed these as in altered the fields inserted new fields or converted to 2010 we found that the data wasn't pulling through and when we ran the report we were just getting the Field name rather than the data. It was a bit strange as it wasn't always the field we had changed that wasn't pulling the data through.

 

We found the workaround was to open the report make the change, verify, save in word close the Template then save in SIM's if we do the process exactly in that order seems to work fine.

[Stuart_C]

Anybody having trouble running Wordlist / (mailmerge) type reports? Especially, running the same report twice or more in a row. Quite a few have had that, recently mentioned in a thread to do with roaming profiles, so not technically an Office 2010 thing, but does affect Win XP and Win 7. No known workarounds just yet, short of logging off and back on again.

 

Sot sure how related but I always have an issue if I've run a report then run it again. Saving As/Closing the output of the first report then closing anything it's opened and re-running the report always works though.

[vikpaw]

That's one of the things i was thinking of Stuart_C but also attendance letters, seem not to like the new office, and quickletter on occasion doesn't.

[Rawns]

"Error. Object reference not set to an instance of an object."

 

We are seeing an increase in the above error message being generated when trying to run reports from SIMS to Office 2010. This is affecting any kind of reports in SIMS .net and we're baffled. There is no real paten between OS or Architecture, the only identical factor is that it's Office 2010 on the machines in different schools. We've done the usual macro checks, repaired Office, installed every available hotfix and service pack all to no effect. We've checked permissions for profiles and nothing stands out. Even more strange is the fact that other users can run reports fine on Win XP/Win 7 to Office 2010 with no problems. Strangely, users can usually run a report on the first attempt after reboot but any time after that, they get the above error. Any suggestions would be appreciated!

[splattthecat]

Anybody having trouble running Wordlist / (mailmerge) type reports? Especially, running the same report twice or more in a row. Quite a few have had that, recently mentioned in a thread to do with roaming profiles, so not technically an Office 2010 thing, but does affect Win XP and Win 7. No known workarounds just yet, short of logging off and back on again.

Hi vikpaw

Yes, we are having problems with this at the moment. Have you had any joy with a fix yet?

[stuartp44]

Hi vikpaw

Yes, we are having problems with this at the moment. Have you had any joy with a fix yet?

 

Have you images in your reports?

[Rawns]

http://www.edugeek.net/forums/mis-systems/83483-error-running-reports.html

 

Issue I'm having. Posted yesterday without seeing this thread first so rather then repost, linked above. /Shakes fist at SIMS & Office 2010

 

EDIT

 

Anybody having trouble running Wordlist / (mailmerge) type reports? Especially, running the same report twice or more in a row. Quite a few have had that, recently mentioned in a thread to do with roaming profiles, so not technically an Office 2010 thing, but does affect Win XP and Win 7. No known workarounds just yet, short of logging off and back on again.

 

I think it's very similar to the issue I'm having above!

Edited October 6, 2011 by Rawns

[splattthecat]

Have you images in your reports?

 

Whether there are images or not does not appear to be relevant, the error occurs with both. Roaming profiles and Office 2010 appears to be the issue, as changing to a local profile seems to fix the problem. Thanks vikpaw for the steer.

[vikpaw]

@Rawns - i've merged your thread in here.

 

@all - I need to combine the other related threads into here really, the most notably workaround we've had was in the other thread, but i can't think which one. This error is an odd one, and i find it happens a lot of photo reports. But can happen with others, i think it's more the template itself.

 

There are two big issues i have found, printing individual reports fails with "SIMS has encountered an error". If you look it is going to the C: drive users folder under appdata\local\temp . The others probs seem to go to "My SIMS Documents" or tempsimsrpts folder which usually goes to whereever the 'My Documents' / 'Documents' is redirected to.

 

For this latter problem, where it has an object error it seems to be to do with having access to a template file from Word. Opening a different type of Word file in another section seems to release this lock. At one point i managed to track down the fact that on first open, the user was the owner but later this changed to a system account. I haven't repeated those findings this academic year though as there have been many system changes. We've tried changing the redirected folders to go to a mapped drive, rather than full UNC path, to no avail as yet.

 

It also affects late letters, which i guess is doing similar with it's mailmerge routine to the reports using wordlist templates which also pull in variables.

 

One user on SupportNet said that opening a student's linked documents prior to printing an ind. report run, stopped the first issue (sims encountered an error). So it all seems related to opening templates, locks on the files, permissions, and roaming-ness. Each set up is different and so hard to troubleshoot, one of the main reasons i haven't logged a case yet, as i can't prove it's SIMS though i'm certain it's to do with the way SIMS uses Office in a windows environment.

 

At the moment, i just keep retrying the report, or a different report, then try quickletters, or a late letter, one of them then releases the lock. Usually, i only need to try another type of report at most twice then can return to the one i want to use. Luckily it's not been a major issue for users as yet.

 

No joy with printing. I spent ages last year, and have got 3-4 scripts, that will rename .xml to .doc, or do bulk printing of .xml files, in a way that prints them in order, so the workaround is to export to a folder, and then print later. Otherwise, i'm thinking of creating a local user account for the guy who does the ind. report printing, but it would be easier to just give him a virtual win7 box to do it on, so he can still do other work, and email etc.

Edited October 8, 2011 by vikpaw
sense

[vikpaw]

Shoot, i totally forget.

Worth trying to run the Office 2010 Interop Primary Assemblies, it's called something like that, from 2010, it's an MSI you can run. It worked for someone on SupportNet, so worth a go. Didn't make any difference on my test machine.

 

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=3508

 

 

Edited October 8, 2011 by vikpaw
add link

[vikpaw]

Here is a great little fix that so far has sorted out the Inability to print multiple reports out of SIMS. Just came across it a few days ago on SupportNet and finally tested it out. Seems to work a treat.

 

It may sort other issues, so might be worth a try @Rawns

 

Description of the Word 2010 hotfix package (Word-x-none.msp): June 28, 2011

 

[Thanks to Catherine on SupportNet for pointing it out ]

[Rob_L]

Recent problems with Office 2010 and printing SIMS reports as 'Word List Report' issue.

 

Problem occurs when running Word List Reports-Report will preview without an error. Running Word List Report will produce an output first time the report is run then gives an Error: Object reference not set to an instance of an object. until the User logs out of SIMS and deletes "tempSimsRpt" folder in My Documents.

 

Repairing Office, reinstalling on SIMS affected workstation and installing Microsoft Office 2010: Primary Interop Assemblies had no effect.

 

The root cause of the problem in our case seems to be when the the location of Microsoft Word User Templates has been changed from the default

The following Reg Key

"HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Common\General\UserTemplates"

exists and has the value of the changed UserTemplates location. e.g "F:\Word_Templates"

 

To Remedy:

Deleted the above "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Common\General\UserTemplates" Reg Key

Browsed to folder "F:\Word_Templates" (\\Server\Server_Share\Word_Templates), renamed "Normal.dotm" to "OldNormal.dotm"

 

Word will then set the template location to the default location and recreate the "Normal.dotm".

Windows XP: %userprofile%\Application Data\Microsoft\Templates\Normal.dotm

Windows 7: userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Templates\Normal.dotm

[vikpaw]

That's really interesting rob_l - that would be another reason, local profiles work, as the redirection will only be for roaming users (...?)

I don't think the temp files are able to cope with the location of redirected folders.

The other issue it could be is if the mapping to the F drive is not visible. I found that some programs are fussy about how they 'see' locations, some will use the F: others will translate that to the full path, one works the other doesn't.

I'd be interested to see if that hotfix had any effect on your system, before the reg key change.

[Rawns]

Had a response from Capita who have suggested all the options posted above. There were two other things to try which I will give a go tomorrow:

 

1. With the suer logged in, delete ALL files in the TempSIMSRpt folder and log back into SIMS to test.

2. Run SIMSPerm.bat and then try again.

[vikpaw]

Had a response from Capita who have suggested all the options posted above. There were two other things to try which I will give a go tomorrow:

 

1. With the suer logged in, delete ALL files in the TempSIMSRpt folder and log back into SIMS to test.

2. Run SIMSPerm.bat and then try again.

 

The first is the normal thing to try and i've done it many times, even changing where the temp folder is in the profile (roaming / local) to see if it made a difference. It didn't.

I doubt very much if it's permissions, besides, most affected users are using windows 7, and i'm not sure simsperm deals with it how it needs.

 

Are you still having problems @Rawns ? The hotfix seems to have fixed the bulk of the problems for us. Yesterday i moved to a shiny new Win7 box with Office 2010, so i'll be doing some testing today, pre and post hotfix. I'm pretty confident it should be fine, but i'll be leaving the XP box available for a while yet, just in case. I think i might make it virtual

[vikpaw]

UPDATE -

Before Hotfix : SIMS has encountered an error

After Hotfix : Bulk printing from ind.reps with no problem.

That fix is HOT

Edited November 1, 2011 by vikpaw

[Rawns]

No joy here unfortunately. We have a handful of users in 4/5 different schools now all suffering the same issue. Every solution from Capita has done nothing and they have drawn a blank. They have advised that they know about the issue and think it's an issue with their templates. One ICT manager in a school did some research into this and thinks it could be down to the macro containing the € symbol in it, however I can't seem to find the macro code in any of the SIMS office documents.

 

So we now await Capita. No idea how long they will able though to fix this.

[vikpaw]

Some of the files in tempSimsRpt have macros, e.g. the rtf template. Some are just generated files though. The way to find them is at the design stage of which ever report, on the template itself, if you enable the developer tab in word / excel, you should be able to find the macros.

The hotfix was a fix to the macros, namely the printout method is the one i think that sorted our bulk printing issue, but it also seemed to sort out the tags not pulling through. Not sure if it was supposed, to but it just does.

A few people on SupportNet saying they have tried both the hotfix and the list of suggestions as above to no joy.