Office 2016 Letter Merge Broken Recently

[xcalibur]

Had a few calls with support over the last week with letter merges not working properly. None of them seemed to resolve the issue. It wasn't that they weren't working at all, but that the result of the merging was incorrect (data out of place, not formatted right, etc). Once I saw another office with the same issue I found that reverting Office back to 2013 from 2016 fixes it. I didn't see any recent Office updates that would have seemed to cause it so it may be a Windows Update. Regardless I'll be keeping everything on 2013 for now.

More an FYI for CS support.

[Anon · Accepted solution]

Good day @xcalibur , 

We have had multiple reports of this in the past few days.  As far as we can tell it is related to recent updates to MS Office itself or to Windows, but we don't have enough information to know for sure. We have seen in many cases that the issues are being reported on versions of MS Office that are not supported per our System Requirements (i.e., Home and Student instead of Professional, or Office 365 integrated, or Click To Run versions).  In those cases updating to a properly supported version has fixed the issue. 

We have found in a few cases that the problem can be partially fixed by doing the following:

1. Inside Word go to File
2. Options
3. Choose Advanced from the list down the left.
4. Scroll the right pane down about a third of the way down to the Show document content section.
5. Look for the Field shading; dropbox and select Never

This seems to at least correct the issue with Word displaying unnecessary shading on merged information, but does not do anything to correct the other issues (extra bullet points, data merging in different places).  Unfortunately the only other thing we can do is wait for Microsoft to fix the issues they introduced, or suggest Google searches to see if other people are reporting similar issues.  

We do appreciate the suggestion of reverting to MS Office 2013 ; unfortunately, that may not be a workable solution for all offices. 

Regards,

Phil Carter / OrthoTrac Escalations

[htrohatos]

Is there any plan to update orthotrac to work with later versions of microsoft office?  2019 is already two years old.  When can we expect orthotrac to catch up? 

One of my staff members just notified me that she called for some help and was told that Orthotrac isn't compatible with Office 2019 and she couldn't get any help with her extraction letters.  The letter isn't pulling in the tooth chart or the pan.

[Anon]

Good day Helen ( @htrohatos ),

I'm sorry but I think there is a miscommunication here.  Your practice contacted us regarding a workstation which was using Microsoft Office 2016, Home and Business version.  The Home and Business version of MS Office is not supported per our System Requirements and so we advised as such.  Unsupported versions will cause any number of strange behaviors including, but not limited to: letters failing to merge at all, error messages, garbage characters merging into the letters, letters that merge some of the time but not other times, formatting issues, and so on. 

OrthoTrac version 15.0 and higher is definitely compatible with Microsoft Office 2019. I do not know what version of OT you are running but if you are on version 15.0 and higher it is certainly supported.  I am attaching a copy of our current System Requirements documentation for your reference.  Later versions are already on the Development roadmap for a future release of OrthoTrac but I cannot offer a definite ETA yet. 

Regards,

Phil Carter / OrthoTrac Escalations

[htrohatos]

Thank you. We have been on office 2019 for a couple of years. We have not installed Orthotrac 15 yet. We do have plans to do so though.

[zachtonlowe]

We have the 32 bit version of office with Word 2019 install on our windows 10 professional machines and we are also experiencing these issues since Monday.  Both the shading, which I followed your instructions to fix, and also extra bullet points.  

[htrohatos]

Yes, we are also on Office 19 and are experiencing the same issues.

[Anon]

Good day Helen ( @htrohatos ) and Dr. Lowe ( @zachtonlowe ),

Unfortunately due to this being a Microsoft Office / Word / Windows issue and not an Orthotrac issue, there are limited things we can to do assist with this.  Here are a few more things that local technicians have found to correct the issue; you may want to have your own technicians try these out:

• If using an unsupported version (Office 365 or Click to Run integrated), install a supported version following our System Requirements (to remove the Click to Run or Office 365 integrated versions, for example). This will generally correct the issue. 
• Install a previous iteration of MS Office  (some office techs have changed from Office 2016, or 2019, back to Office 2013 when they began seeing this and reported it resolved the issue).  Office 2016 or higher seems to cause this more frequently. 
• If using a Click to Run or Office 365 auto-updating version:  Revert the program back to a previous version update or "build" (we cannot provide exact steps on this process since Click to Run and Office 365 are not supported, but some techs have told us they did this through command line prompts). 
• Change the settings related to bullet points in MS Word:

1. Go to File > Options > Proofing.

2. Select AutoCorrect Options, and then select the AutoFormat As You Type tab.

3. Select (or clear) Automatic bulleted lists or Automatic numbered lists.

4. Select OK.

• Change other settings related to formatting in MS Word (we cannot provide specifics as it is not known which specific settings may cause this).

I hope these suggestions help.  We are still gathering information about this issue and will try to keep this post updated as additional suggestions are discovered. 

Regards,

Phil Carter / OrthoTrac Escalations

[zachtonlowe]

The issues with the extra bullet points and highlights, seemed to have fixed themselves between Friday and today.  Microsoft must have pushed out an updated.  We are using Office 2019 on Windows 10 Pro and not having those issues anymore on our letters and has been fixed on every computer we have tried it on.  We are on orthotrac 15.1.3.27 and Imaging 11.13.0.214.  So if there is a Windows or Office update pending it may take care of these issues.  Hope that helps.  

[xcalibur]

Thanks for additional info, Phil.

These offices do have Pro Plus so they should be set otherwise.