Office 2010 Compatibility Issues With Dynamics GP

I recently encountered an error when printing the SOP Sales Invoice Form as Word Template from a batch.

There were no issues when printing a word template for a single transaction, but when printing it from a batch I was presented with the following error message:

“We’re sorry. We can’t open [file name] because we found a problem with its contents.”

Details – Unspecified error

After clicking OK the second error message appeared:

Word found unreadable content in [file name]. Do you want to recover the contents of this document? If you trust the source of this document, click Yes.

If you click Yes, the template will open up.

After doing some research and testing, I was able to find out that when modifying the Word Template the “Maintain Compatibility with Previous Versions of Word” option must be checked off when saving the template for the first time (see the below image). If this option is not selected, it will cause issues with the Template Processing Engine (TPE) – and the word template will not print from a batch.

REMEMBER:  Make sure the option to Maintain Compatibility is always selected when saving the modified word template the first time!

Why is this option so important?

Word 2007 and 2010 have some differences in the word document formats. Selecting the Maintain Compatibility option allows the template to keep the Word 2007 format. If the option is not selected the template is saved in the Word 2010 format, and you cannot re-save it in any other format again because the option is not available the next time you save it using Save as.

What can you do if you already modified the word template and saved it in the Word 2010 format?

There are two options:

1. Recreate the template from scratch and save it in the right format. This is probably the least favorable and most time consuming option (especially if the template was heavily modified).

2. Copy the modified template into the new default template and when you save it using Save as make sure to check off the Maintain Compatibility option. This option allows the designer to quickly copy the changes from the modified template into the new one instead of recreating it from scratch. To do this, follow the below steps:
   1. Open a new default word template.
   2. Transfer over the modified sections from the modified word template into the new template by cutting and pasting the Header, Body, and Footer sections.
   3. Once you have copied all the sections into the new template, click Save as and tick off the Maintain Compatibility option.
   4. Import the newly modified word template back into Microsoft Dynamics GP and test it to ensure that the issue has been fixed.