Tips and Tricks – Page 5 – Schulz Consulting

Installing Extended Solutions PDF Converter on Windows 2008 64 Bit

July 20, 2009 by Wayne Schulz

The information below is unverified (my client is still in the midst of testing the resolution). You should only perform the steps if you’re comfortable “messing around” with operating system level commands. Be sure you have a full backup prior to starting.

Update October 2011:

See this post for a nicely updated summary of current fixes for these types of issues

Update 1-23-2011:
Most of this post is superseded by the following two links:

Fix for Paperless Office Printing to Windows 64 Bit – version 4.30
Fix for Paperless Office Printing to Windows 64 Bit – version 4.40

Versions 4.5 and higher of Sage 100 ERP should automatically install the proper paperless drivers. When installing the paperless drivers be sure to change the Sage PDF Printer port to be a local one (NOT LPT1) and create a local port name to attach it to (usually we pick sage as the port name).

Should you get stuck with this issue we can assist our customers who are under a Schulz Support plan or if you are not under plan please view these Sage 100 ERP support options.

NOTE: The following information is largely superseded by the two links shown above. Please follow the links above before attempting to use the information below

There’s unfortunately no official Sage support for having Paperless Office PDF printing work on 64 Bit operating systems with Sage 100 ERP versions earlier than 4.30

One situation that a client encountered recently was an apparent inability to install the MAS 90 Paperless Office PDF Converter to Windows 2008 64 Bit edition. Each time we attempted to run the Extended Solution PDF setup (Library Master – Main – Company Maintenance – Email Tab – Advanced) – we would be greeted with “Unable to initialize PDF viewer”.

Upon closer inspection we could see that the install routine did not appear to place the PDF writer into the printers folder on the server. One theory is that we perhaps needed a 64 bit version of the Amyuni PDF drivers.

Note: We are still testing this solution and still cannot report that this resolves every (or any) case of problems installing the Extended Solutions PDF writer to a 64 bit operating system. The instructions below are meant to only be used with a 64 Bit OS where all other normal installations have been unsuccessful.

We have had one report that downloading this driver and installing it will resolve issues with installing Paperless Office under Windows 7 64-bit.

Again, these solutions are all workarounds people have reported using and not supported by Sage or guaranteed to work in every situation.

Install MAS90 Extended Solutions PDF Writer Manually to Windows 2008 64 Bit

1. Right-click on your Desktop, and select New > Folder. Name the folder ‘Amyuni 64bit Driver’.
2. Click here to download and save the file to the ‘Amyuni 64bit Driver’ folder on your Desktop.
3. Unzip the contents of the zip file into the ‘Amyuni 64bit Driver’ folder.
4. Enter amyuni when prompted for a password.
5. Double-click the Install.exe file located in the ‘Amyuni 64bit Driver’ to begin the driver installation process. An Amyuni Document Converter will open, displaying the current progress.
6. Once the installation is complete, click the OK button in the Amyuni Document Converter window.
7. Verify that the PDF driver was installed correctly:
In Windows XP: Click on Start > Printers and Faxes. You should see a printer called ‘Amyuni Document Converter’.
In Windows Vista: Click the Windows button and select Printers.

8. Right click the ‘Amyuni Document Converter’, select Rename, and rename the printer to Extended Solutions PDF Converter.

If any of the above links do not work – try following the link below to the source of this post.

Note: Sage does not officially endorse or support this solution. Use at your own risk and do not expect that Sage will debug this unless they issue a future updated support position.

Suggest a MAS90 feature goes live (Ideascope)

July 3, 2009 by Wayne Schulz

If you know the link – then as of today you’re able to submit new ideas and suggestions for Sage MAS 90/200/500 improvements directly to Sage using their new Sage Ideascope system that manages user feedback.

IdeaScope is a hosted feedback management solution for software product development that makes it easy for Sage to gain greater insight from customers about features (or problems) in their software.

By navigating to:

http://ideascopeanywhere.com/sagemas/frmSubmitIdea.aspx

You can submit your own product improvement ideas directly to Sage. How many times have you wondered aloud why a particular feature isn’t in your accounting software? Now instead of wondering to yourself you can suggest the feature directly to the publisher (Sage).

Prior to submitting suggestions, Ideascope allows you to review ideas that others may have submitted (which are similar to yours). This lets you eliminate any duplication and ensure that your submission is unique.

Curious about what you’ve sent to Sage? You’ll be happy to see that you now can review all the ideas you’ve submitted in the past

Watch for this feature to be accessible not only via the web link noted above but directly from within Sage MAS 90, Sage MAS 200 and Sage MAS 500 in the future.

While Sage have always had a suggestion box for new features and enhancements – this is the first time that the suggestion area has been easily accessible via the web and does not require a login behind the Sage product site itself. Hopefully this ease of use will increase the numbers of suggestions that are submitted and in return result in an even greater number of relevant new features to the Sage MAS 90 and 200 product lines.

via: Dawn Anastasi – C&G Consulting – Wisconsin Sage MAS90, MAS200 and MAS500 consultants and resellers

How to spot duplicate or test versions of Sage MAS 90 or 200

July 2, 2009 by Wayne Schulz

When installing upgrades to Sage MAS 90 or MAS 200 it is not uncommon for duplicate or backup copies of the program to remain in place on your network hard drive while a new version is installed.

This is often done so that your company has a way to roll back to the earlier version of Sage MAS 90 or 200 should something go wrong during (or after) the upgrade.

Unfortunately what often happens is that old copies of MAS 90 are left behind and never erased. This can cause confusion down the road if someone attempts to setup a workstation connecting to your older (and now innacurate) MAS 90 or MAS 200 data.

How To Safely Remove Test Versions of MAS 90 or MAS 200

First, determine where your LIVE (good) Sage MAS 90 or MAS 200 is installed. You can refer to the instructions in this post which outline how to find the proper folder.

Once you find the PROPER folder — take care NOT to delete that one as it is the location of your live active data.

Instead search your hard drive for any folders other than the one above which contain the \MAS90 structure.

Once you’ve located \MAS90 folders which you believe are older test versions, I strongly suggest that you:

A. Rename the suspected older folder to \MAS90OLDTOBEDELETED
B. Within the \MAS90OLDTOBEDELETED\HOME folder rename pvxwin32.exe to be pvxwin32.old

What you’ve just done in the above steps is disable your old version of Sage MAS 90 from starting up. I like to do this and let the system stay this way for several days so I can see if there are any people accessing the old MAS 90 program (usually not) – but more importantly renaming the folder will expose any third party applications which might be using data within the old MAS 90 folder structure.

If there are programs such as paperless or FRX or F9 that try to access the old MAS 90 folder (which you renamed to \MAS90OLDTOBEDELETED) then you will receive an error message which then lets you know that you have either the wrong folder or you need to contact your Sage business partner about moving data outside that folder.

I strongly recommend you make a backup of any files PRIOR to deleting them.

Once several days have passed and nobody has received error messages related to the old data folder – it is generally ok to first make a copy of that OLD folder and to delete it. IMPORTANT: BE SURE YOU ARE DELETING THE \MAS90TOBEDELETED FOLDER AND NOT YOUR LIVE DATA. MAKE A BACKUP FIRST.

How to backup MAS 90 or MAS 200

July 2, 2009 by Wayne Schulz

We’re frequently asked which Sage MAS 90 or MAS 200 data files should be backed up to ensure that to ensure that there is a completely restorable set of program and data files.

While you can attempt to backup files in any number of ways (only those that change or incremental as well as full backup) the only method we recommend is a full backup of all data files.

All versions of Sage MAS 90 and 200 are installed to a folder \MAS90 (note that this folder name is NOT different for Sage MAS 200).

To Find Where MAS 90 Is Installed – All Levels:

To discover the exact path where your Sage MAS 90 is installed (note that this procedure is different for anyone using MAS 200) – start the MAS 90 program and select File and Run from the menu.

In the sample image above your Sage MAS 90 program and data is all stored within the network drive h:\acct\v4.2\mas90.

In order to backup you’d specify that all of the data in the \mas90 folder and all subfolders should be saved.

While you technically may be able to only back up files that have changed we recommend that you take the entire folder (and all subfolders).

This will back up the core MAS 90 program and data files.

If you are using third party programs such as FRX you also should be sure to backup the SYSDATA folder (locatable via the FRX – Administration panel).

Be sure to backup any paperless office files (PDF) – the location of which can be stored nearly anywhere on your network (review the Paperless Office setup menu for Journals and Registers, Period End, Report, and Form in order to see where you’ve specified the Paperless documents should be stored. These are NOT automatically inside the \MAS90 folder so you should take care to locate their custom location).

To Find Where MAS 200 Is Installed – All Levels:

The procedure for MAS 200 backup is essentially the same as above except you cannot normally use the *INFO solution to find where MAS 200 is installed because it provides the location of your local workstation configuration file — when what you want is the location of the network data.

One way to discover where MAS 200 is installed on the server is to work directly on the server and look under the Administrative options and check the MAS 200 service which should display the location that MAS 200 is installed on the server.

TIPS:

Have everyone out of Sage MAS 90 or 200 when you backup. If there is someone in the system you run the chance of a data file (or files) not transferring properly because they are in use.

Before finalizing a backup policy – double check that you have located the correct folder containing current Sage MAS 90 or MAS 200 data. It is a good idea to check the data file dates to be sure they are current and display the date of the last time you performed data entry in the system. Your MAS 90 and MAS 200 data files are stored in the MAS90\MAS_xxx folder where xxx is your 3 character Sage MAS 90 or 200 company code.

Always test your backups to be sure that you can restore the data. After you’ve made a test restore – go into the data and be sure it is current and complete. Test your restore to a separate server so as not to over-write existing data.

Keep as many copies of your backups as you have space for. At a minimum we recommend two weeks of daily backups and 12 monthly and 1 yearly backup. Where backups are concerned – always err on the side of having too many.

Remember – proper backup procedures are one of your most important responsibilities to safeguard against loss of data. The information here is general in nature and cannot possibly cover every user situation. You are advised to test all backups by performing a full restore to a test location to verify that your procedure is working.

How To Install Sage MAS 90 Paperless Office On Terminal Server and eliminate “unable to process lockfile” and “unable to initialize PDF viewer” errors

July 1, 2009 by Wayne Schulz

If you are setting up MAS 90 or MAS 200 under Terminal Server/Citrix and attempting to use Paperless Office for your forms/reports you may receive one of the following errors:

1. Unable to process lockfile
2. Unable to initialize PDF Viewer

UPDATE OCTOBER 2011: See this “Best article on solving Sage ERP MAS90 paperless office printing problems” which contains an updated and more complete list of resolutions for the typical problems encountered while using paperless office within MAS90 or MAS200.

While there may be other resolutions (One possible cure for which is described in the Schulz Consulting Knowledgebase and involves registry entry changes which you should be extremely careful with), we’ve seen the following steps work to eliminate both of the above error conditions:

Unable to initialize PDF Viewer by selecting “run as administrator” for the MAS200 installation. It appears that this only must be done once and that after the initial time of starting the MAS 200 workstation that the proper DLL (we think cdintf.dll) is then registered.

In order to overcome the “unable to process lockfile” try temporarily adding the user to the “power users” group on the Terminal Server. Re-run the setup of paperless office (this is in Company Maintenance – Email – Advanced).

It appears that both issues are user rights related.

Once the above is done you may be able to successfully test the PDF viewer with no errors.

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Install MAS90 Extended Solutions PDF Writer Manually to Windows 2008 64 Bit

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