System Forms - Merge Form Error

Problem 

When creating a document based on a system 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 form document templates to Word’s docx format (rather than the old doc format).

To upgrade the form document format, you will need to: 

1. Open the existing form template as read only and then in Word use the Save As function to save a copy in the docx format to your desktop or somewhere on your local machine so you can find it later.
2. Close Word
3. In LawMaster:
   1. Change the relevant form to use the docx format via Main Menu > System Maintenance > Forms > Form Enquiry > Select the form > Context Menu > Modify > Form File Name > Unlock and then change the document type from .doc to .docx. 
   2. Upload the new document from step 1 to Forms via Main Menu > System Maintenance > Forms > Select the form > Context Menu > Modify > Document Upload.

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. 

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.
      
      IMPORTANT: 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.