Error message when previewing topics in Flare 2019 R2

[btompkins]

Just curious if anyone else is running into a problem with previewing topics after upgrading to Flare 2019 R2? I'm getting the "Failed to compile document: Object reference not set to an instance of an object" error message now when I attempt to preview. I'm not really sure where to start to troubleshoot the issue. Any ideas?

[Perrorist]

"Object reference not set to an instance of an object" is usually caused by a programming error or corrupt data. It needs to be reported to Madcap.

[btompkins]

Good to know. Thank you! I'll do that.

[ChoccieMuffin]

Have you tried the default fix-all? Close Flare, and in Windows Explorer delete the Analyzer and Output folders. When you re-open the Flare project the Analyzer folder is generated automatically.

[btompkins]

Have you tried the default fix-all? Close Flare, and in Windows Explorer delete the Analyzer and Output folders. When you re-open the Flare project the Analyzer folder is generated automatically.

No luck, sadly. But thanks for the suggestion!

[btompkins]

Just want to circle back here with the resolution in case anyone else runs into this problem.

From Support's very helpful guidance, the resolution was to open the TopicToolbar skin component and go to the Setup tab. From there, remove the TopicRatings button from the Selected column.

That solved it for me!

[amazingsleep]

Came here because I was experiencing the same issue, and removing the TopicRatings button from the TopicToolbar skin fixed it.

At a glance, it doesn't appear removing this button has impacted anything, but I have not done a full build and publish yet. Any idea what kind of ramifications removing this item from that skin may have? We'll do our own internal testing of course but I'd like to know where I should be looking for issues.

(full disclosure I'm not the one who set up our project so it's a little bit of feeling around in the dark as I go)

[btompkins]

Came here because I was experiencing the same issue, and removing the TopicRatings button from the TopicToolbar skin fixed it.

At a glance, it doesn't appear removing this button has impacted anything, but I have not done a full build and publish yet. Any idea what kind of ramifications removing this item from that skin may have? We'll do our own internal testing of course but I'd like to know where I should be looking for issues.

(full disclosure I'm not the one who set up our project so it's a little bit of feeling around in the dark as I go)

Sorry for the delay - I missed your question! Glad to hear this fixed it for you as well. I asked Support the same thing with regards to the ramifications of removing this item and this is what they told me:

TopicRatings is intended for output that is using MadCap Feedback Server for analytics and ratings, which is now a deprecated feature. You will not lose any functionality by removing this from the topic toolbar.

The only thing I noticed was a separator showed up next to the print and expand icons in one of our projects, but that can be fixed by removing the Separator or making the color of the Separator transparent.

[telmaiara]

My colleague was experiencing the same issue when opening any .htm file. Then, we noticed that she had the Preview active in a tab on the right-hand side of her screen in Flare, with the Target set to Word output.

Since Flare doesn’t create a preview for Word output, that vague pop-up kept showing. When she changed the Target to a preview-friendly output, the message no longer appeared.