Help Center

System Forms - Merge Form Error

Problem 

When creating a document based on a system WP Form, a Merge Form Error dialog is shown and the document is not created.

This may be encountered during actions such as creating bills, trust statements or generating file notes for printing.

You may see a message like one of the following:

 

Solution: Invalid WP Form type

This error is most likely to occur after an upgrade if you have not reviewed the post upgrade actions required. On recent LawMaster upgrades, there has been a requirement to also upgrade your WP Form format from .doc to docx.

To upgrade the WP Form file format, you will need to:

Change the Form file to .docx

  1. Go to Main Menu > System Maintenance > Forms > Form Enquiry, select the form and right-click for the context menu, then select Modify.
  2. Click Unlock by the Form File Name, then change the document type extension from .doc to .docx.

 
Modify the WP Form

  1. Select the WP Form in the Forms Enquiry list, right-click for the context menu and select Open (Read Only).
  2. Save the file to a preferred location.

  3. Re-open the WP Form from your preferred location and then re-save the Document, changing the file type from .doc to .docx.

Upload the updated document to LawMaster

  1. Go back to Main Menu > System Maintenance > Forms > Forms Enquiry.
  2. Select the form and right-click for the context menu, then select Modify.
  3. Add the updated document in the Document Upload field.

Once that has been completed for your WP Forms, go to Menubar > File and click 'Clear Temporary Files', then click 'Reset Login Settings' to refresh the cache.

 

Solution: Object reference not set to an instance of an object

As this error generally relates to some kind of corruption or unexpected formatting within the form template this may be solved in one of several progressive steps.

The templates for these items will be found in LawMaster via Main Menu > System Maintenance > Forms Enquiry.

Note: Don’t make any changes here if you are not familiar with the process or setup of these forms. The steps below assume you have some existing knowledge of this process.

The steps you can try are:

  1. Refresh the fields in the form:
    1. With the form open for editing, use Ctrl+A to select all content, then press F9 to refresh the fields. You may have to separately select header and footer content and repeat the process.

    2. Save the changes and test the form again. There is no test process available, so you will need to use the system action that generates the form.

      Note: Some forms may be set to automatically email themselves to other, including customers. Take care to ensure this will be appropriate when testing

  2.  Remove and reinsert forms fields into the form template document:
    1. With the form open for editing, go through each form field and remove the field, then re-add the field using the tool in LawMaster at Main Menu > System Maintenance > Forms Workbench. 
    2. Save the changes and test the form again. There is no test process available, so you will need to use the system action that generates the form
  3.  Remove and reinsert tables, then re-test.
  4. Rebuild the form from a blank document. This is your best option if nothing else has helped. To avoid copying errant items back into the document, you should start with a blank document and manually recreate as much as possible. Where possible, leave anything that you must copy and paste, such as logos until after you have seen some working tests.

Updated