OLE Note Migration Utility, Everything you will need to know – you hope!

When upgrading from GP2013R2 to GP2015R2, you will lose all your old OLE note attachments.  Microsoft has provided us with a utility to help migrate those notes so we can see them in the new Document Attach window.

It is important to note the OLE note migration utility is designed to work with GP2015R2 only.  You can extract Notes from GP2013R2 or earlier but you cannot import these files until you are on GP2015 or later.

The problem is this utility is very finicky.  Here are some troubleshooting tips to help you.

What does the OLE Note Migration Utility Do?

In GP2013 Microsoft gave us Document Attachment windows.  This was very cool only they were limited to only a few windows.  So they continued to allow us to attach documents the old way through the OLE note window.  Prior to GP2013R2, you could attach documents to your OLE note window – in GP2013R2 the Document Attachment window was available anywhere there was a paperclip, and your old OLE attachments were still available.  When you upgrade to GP2015R2 those OLE note attachments are no longer there!  Well, they are, but you need to find them.

Getting Started with the Utility

1. Download the utility from here.
   EXPORT THE ATTACHMENTS
2. After unzipping the file, run the OLENoteMaintenance.exe file.
3. I prefer to use SQL Authentication, but you can try to run it with Windows Trusted Authentication. You will need administrator privileges to make this method work.
4. Extract OLE object files from an existing GP installation. See Tip #1
5. You will need to know where your Dex.ini file is. Typically you will find it in the data folder in your GP2015 code folder.  (C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Dynamics\GP2015\Data) See Tip #2

• If you have more than one company, try doing one company at a time. See Tip #3 See Tip #4
• Choose a path to extract the files to.
• Check the Space Available. See Tip #5
• Delete the OLE object files from the source location. See Tip #6
  IMPORT ATTACHMENTS
• Rerun the utility OLENoteMaintenance.exe file.
• Select Import extracted OLE object files into an existing GP installation.
• Browse to the Extracted File Path from step #9.
• Complete the wizard and take note if any attachments failed.  See Tip #7
• If there were errors browse to where the Extracted File was saved. You will see a logs folder.  Choose the detailed log and determine what errors are present. See Tip #8 See Tip #9
• Fix the errors and re-run the import process.ACCESSING NOTES AFTER THE IMPORT
• From your inquiry window or Vendor/Customer maintenance card, click the yellow note icon
• Click the paper clip icon.
• If prompted choose Document Attach

 

Troubleshooting Tips

Tip #1

Run this on the terminal server or machine using OLE notes.  All required programs must be installed on the machine running this utility.  Word, Excel, PDFs will require the host program.  These may not be installed on the server.

Tip #2

Open the Dex.ini file and find the lines that begin with OLEpath.  Note the Paths:

OLEPath=

OLEPathHR=

If this path is not local to this installation, then copy the Entire Notes folder to a local directory.

Now take a copy of the Dex.ini file and change the OLEpaths to this new Local directory path.

When entering the Dex.ini path in step #5, change it to the Dex – Copy.ini file.

Tip #3

This utility times out very easily.  So if you have a lot of attachments to import you will want to try importing one company at a time.

Tip #4

Import the HR notes separately from the rest of the notes.
Remove the hr_ole folder and add it back after the initial import it done.

Tip #5

Even though this OLE Object Migration Utility window says you have enough space available, we found if we were close it would not import due to space issues.  Make sure you have a lot of space available.  While this reports on the workstation space, it is also looking at the space where your databases are stored (called your PRIMARY file location).  If this becomes a space restriction you will see a message in your log file.

Tip #6

Deleting files after import cleans up your system.  Since you no longer need to keep copies of all these attachments you can remove them from your system.  However, if you don’t delete them while exporting them, you will need to delete them manually.  We were nervous about deleting them until we were sure they imported.  So we re-ran the export utility after we had imported all the attachments and were able to delete them all at one time.

Note:  Don’t forget to remove them from the original location as well as the copied location.

Tip #7

Rerun this utility until zero files are imported consistently or all files are imported.  You may need to run this several times.  If some files are not imported check your log folder for errors.

Tip #8

If you see an error referencing “The conversion of a nvarchar data type to a datetimedata type resulted in an out-of-rage value”

Change the Regional settings to English (United States).  You can change it back after.

Tip #9

If the import continues to fail run the following script in PowerShell:

• Click the Start Orb or windows icon and type PowerShell
• Choose Windows PowerShell

You will need to change the following lines in this script:

Line 4 – reflect your actual GP path and database ID.

Line 33 – change SERVER_NAME to your server name and Catalog ID to your database ID