"Object reference not set to an instance of an object."

[TechnicalDisaster]

Hello!

I did a search in the importing forum and did not find the results I am looking for. I'm importing a book from FrameMaker 7.2 to Flare 6.1.

It appears to get to the very end of the import and fails. Here is the error message:

Created topic: Sequence_Analysis.htm...
Created topic: Notes.htm...
Created topic: Commands.htm...
Converting FrameMaker document: InterfaceIX.fm...
Created topic: InterfaceIX.htm...
Saving stylesheet: Doc.css...
Saving variable set: Doc...
Saving condition tag set: Doc...
Saving TOC file: Doc...
Patching document links...
: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.

Aborted.

Where can I begin to troubleshoot this issue? I have many other Frame Book files that I can covert without issue. This one appears to be indentical ot the others.

Furthermore, does anyone have a link to download Flare version 5? I have a license key for it, but my LAN department deleted it when they installed version 6.

Thanks for any help!

[lacastle]

I've seen this error message with FM imports (i'm going from FM 7.1 to Flare 6.1). i think to get around it i went into the FM file and removed a lot of the formatting, or i may have tried to convert to Word first and then go to Flare. The last option would be copying and pasting from FM to Flare. My book wasn't very large (only about 20 pages) so copying/pasting wasn't a horrible solution. are you trying to import a whole book or individual chapters? maybe you could isolate the problem that way.

"Object reference not set to an instance of an object" is one of the WORST error messages i've read. actually, most of the Flare building error messages are useless like that.

[lacastle]

Furthermore, does anyone have a link to download Flare version 5? I have a license key for it, but my LAN department deleted it when they installed version 6.

you can contact MadCap Sales for this. Sales@MadCapSoftware.com

[TechnicalDisaster]

Thank you for your reply's lacastle. This book is 500 pages long. I tried removing one chapter at a time but the process would still abort. I received the download link for Madcap 5, and version 5 imported the guide just fine. It is very frustrating that Flare deletes all the progress in the import when this failure occurs. It would be nice if they gave me the option to use the project as is and see if the error would even impact my project at all. After all, according to the log, Flare created all the topics for every chapter, created the TOC,and created the index. What else is left?

[joy]

I realize this post is older but wanted to add a note here.

This error seems to be a catch-all with no troubleshooting hints whatsoever. I have had to contact Madcap Support almost every time. And I agree: why can't Flare give you the option of keeping the output after generating most of it?!

I have seen the error with too-large book files, mobile target generation (which is what brought me to this thread), and
anchored frames/image conversion when converting FrameMaker files. Removing all the imported images from the FrameMaker files solved the problem in this case.