Word target gets blank pages in Edit mode

[williamgwilliams]

I have a project that, when I build the Word target, then do View Output, renders all pages as blank. If I switch my View From Print mode to Read mode, the content displays. But if I then change to View > Edit Document, it reverts to blank pages. I have other projects that don't do this; when I build the Word target for them, then click View Output, when the Word file displays, I can select View > Edit Document and get an editable document. When I take the Word target for this project and copy it into the problematic project, and use it when I build the target*, it comes up with blank pages, like my other Word target did.

The Word target that works, comes up like this:

Word_Target_that_Works.png

The Word target that is all blank pages comes up like this:

Word_target_that_doesn't_work.png

When I click the link in that error message, I see this page:

Expanded_Message_of_failed_target.png

And when I then click Edit Anyway, the document has all blank pages:

Any idea how I can fix this?

Thanks,

- Willie

* I don't need to change of the General settings, as they are all "Default."

[williamgwilliams]

A possible clue to this is that this Word target, unlike my other ones, comes up in "Compatibility mode":

Compatibility_Mode.png

I upgraded to Office 2016 last week, and perhaps that has caused Word to behave differently than it did before. But even if so, I don't know how to get it out of compatibility mode.

[williamgwilliams]

Well, I saved the Word file in another location, and resolved the compatibility issue, but it's still a blank document, except in Read mode.

[SteveS]

Compatibility mode (and if you look at the title in your screenshot of the one that works you'll see it is in compatibility mode as well) is used by Word to open documents created with an earlier version of word and disable any features your version of Word might use that cannot be used by the version of Word used to create the document. It used to be if a newer version of Word opened a .doc, rather than .docx, document but I see it can now occur if 2013/ 2016 is used to open a 2010 .docx.

You can convert the document to the newer format by clicking File -> Info -> Convert, but if the document is going to be edited by someone with an older version of Word it is not recommended.

I'm not sure that is your issue, however.

Rather your issue is Word doesn't trust the document or its location.

If you open Word's options and click on Trust Center, you can add locations to the Trusted Locations list. I'd give that a whirl and see what happens...

[williamgwilliams]

Thanks Steve,

I added the specific target directory and also my top Madcap directory (where all my projects reside), plus sub-directories, but the generated Word file is still blank. I also converted it back to the pre-Office 2016 Word version, but that, too, didn't help.

I copied a Word target file from a different project, that builds fine, and used it for my project that has the blank pages problem. So both target files have the same settings. But the original one builds fine, whereas the other one has the blank pages. If I go into View in the Word output file, and change to Read Mode, I see all the content. But when I then go into View there, and select Edit Document, it goes to blank pages again. I don't really *need* a Word version for customers. I was just going to use it to spell check the system, as I find the Word spellcheck catches a lot of things the Flare spellcheck misses. So I'd like to have an editable (i.e., spellcheck-able) Word version. But I guess I've spent enough time spinning on this.

- Willie

[carakelian]

I had this same problem, and I think it is some sort of problem with the print layout file in Flare. I looked at the "Word overlay" and saw that somethings looked like they were outside of the page edges, but I could not see how to fix them, and the Flare documentation did not talk about how to fix Word overlay problems. Finally, the way I solved this was to go into the Word target file in Flare, and on the General tab, for Master Page Layout, I had to select the default, whose path was Resources/PageLayouts/Default. Once I did this, the pages were no longer blank in the Word file for the Print view.