Outline & Environment:
We came across an error on one of our sites today and as the solution is a little obscure I thought it would be good to share it here. I have already passed this information on to Capita so they can assist other schools experiencing this problem.
The specific environment where we encountered this problem consists of Windows 7 x86, Office 2010 32-bit and a user account / profile with redirected Documents + AppData folders. Users would try to generate a report, and be able to do so the first time but on the second (and third and subsequent) attempt they would receive the Error: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
The only workaround available was to close and re-open SIMS.net, which would then allow them to generate one report again.
Solution:
The solution in is to install a hotfix for Microsoft Word. The hotfix you need is KB2553912.
Further details:
While troubleshooting this issue we tried a number of different things, including:
- elevating the user's priveleges to local administrator (this did not help)
- running the SIMS.net simsperm.bat file (no help)
- trying a user with a local profile (this did get rid of the error but wasn't a viable solution)
- Changing the Word template location (no help)
- Deleting the My Documents\tempSimsRpt folder (no difference)
- Deleting the contents of the My Documents\tempSimsRpt folder (no difference)
- Several others that it doesn't seem worth listing - they didn't help!
Hope this helps some of you out there!