Version 14 - 08/23/2023 Maintenance Release

[Zorak]

A new Maintenance Release dated 08/23/2023 has been released for PowerChurch Plus Version 14. This release provides a free update to Version 14.4, with new and updated features.

PowerChurch Online servers will be updated automatically overnight. For PowerChurch Online users, no further action needs to be taken.

This Maintenance Release includes the following:

General

• Built-in reports allow saving as DOCX, ODT, XLSX, and ODS file types. This feature requires an existing installation of Microsoft Office 2007 (or higher) or LibreOffice. If neither exists, it offers to send you to the download page for LibreOffice (it's free and open source!)
• Internet Explorer-based iWebBrowser2 controls have been replaced with Edge-Chromium based WebView2 controls on compatible systems. In PowerChurch, these are the PowerChurch Today and Quick Tasks menu. These views should load much more quickly than before and not freeze the UI while loading

Membership

• Shared Membership options tab added to Family Mailing List and Personal Profiles Setup Options screens
• Option to not uppercase last names on reports and other output

Attendance

• Absentee Report now fits many more records per page. If contact information is not included, report is single spaced. With contact information included, a much smaller space is inserted between each record.

Visitations

• When adding new Visitations, the Who Visited field defaults to that family's assigned Who Visits value

Contributions

• New Pledge Age Range report
• Posted Contributions report has new sort/group options: Fund No., Fund Name, and Date
• Posted Contributions report no longer hides repeated Envelope numbers and Names, which makes it a better way to export to a spreadsheet.
• Designated Contributions report (with contribution details) added a grand total
• Option to specify the default Contribution Type for Enter Contributions
• MICR check reader now supports format 0000 as well as 3100. (This may help if check numbers from personal accounts are being limited to four digits)
• Warn when invalid account numbers are assigned to Contribution Funds
• Warn when posting contributions will not create a Fund Accounting transaction
• Importing new contributor information from Vanco - Replace all upper or lower case names with proper case

Fund Accounting

• Close multiple months at once
• Monthly Budget Amounts report optionally includes Actual balances
• Import Accounting Transactions redesigned (added support for Transaction Description and Line Description.

Accounts Payable

• Manually add new 1099-MISC/NEC forms when none exist

Accounts Receivable

• Selected Payments report - Added total payments line

Payroll

• Merge Duplicate Item Descriptions utility
• Hide deprecated tax table types (e.g. Pre-2020) when adding a new tax table
• Accounting Audit Log entry created when a saved Process Payroll session is discarded

Events

• Edit shared event information in one or all event occurrences

Equipment Inventory

• Equipment Maintenance logs
• Selected Equipment report allows selection for Requires Maintenance
• New Equipment Maintenance Due report
• New Equipment Maintenance Performed report
• PowerChurch Today entries for Maintenance Due and Maintenance Performed

Education Library

• Lookup borrower name from Personal Profiles
• Automatically update dates/count when assigning borrower
• Button to remove borrower name (when returning item)
• PowerChurch Today entry for Education Library Items Due

[fbctnc]

Stand alone version 14
When I click Help>Download MR, a screen opens that says "A new MR of Power Church Plus is available. Would you like to download and install it? Yes/No" I click "Yes" and the MR downloads, but does not install. How can I install the download?

[NeilZ]

Stand alone version 14
When I click Help>Download MR, a screen opens that says "A new MR of Power Church Plus is available. Would you like to download and install it? Yes/No" I click "Yes" and the MR downloads, but does not install. How can I install the download?

I would head to the main Powerchurch page, click on DOWNLOAD, and select MAINTENANCE RELEASE. Download it manually from there.

[mafmctr]

I attempt to download the new release but it does not install. Here is the entry in the prautomr.log file...

08/24/23 05:59:17 PM: There is not enough memory to complete this operation. at line 37

[Zorak]

We have seen that behavior (with or without error a few times now) and are working on a fix for it.

In the meantime, as Neil pointed out, you can still manually download the update from https://www.powerchurch.com/mr. Saving the pcp14mr.exe file in the PowerChurch Plus program directory (by default C:\PowerChurch\PCPLUS14) will trigger the auto install next time you start up.

[mafmctr]

Built-in reports allow saving as DOCX, ODT, XLSX, and ODS file types....XLSX option creates a XLS file. We have Office 2021 installed.

[Zorak]

A new MR was just published that allows LibreOffice to be used instead of Microsoft Office for those that have problems with MS Office.

That said, we will need more information to be able to help diagnose a problem. It will be best that you give us a call at (800) 486-1800 when you have access to PowerChurch and a technician will take a look at it with you.

[mafmctr]

A new MR was just published that allows LibreOffice to be used instead of Microsoft Office for those that have problems with MS Office.

That said, we will need more information to be able to help diagnose a problem. It will be best that you give us a call at (800) 486-1800 when you have access to PowerChurch and a technician will take a look at it with you.

I was attempting to report a bug. I installed the 9/6/23 update and it appears that the XLSX export actually creates two files...XLS and XLSX...at the same time. Is that the expected result?

[Zorak]

The process works as follows: Crystal Reports creates the file in DOC or XLS format, then it is sent to Microsoft Office or LibreOffice, which both have command line tools built-in to convert files from old formats to new. Once the new file has been created, the old file is deleted.

Since you are seeing both files now, but previously said it was only creating the XLS, either way, it sounds like something failed in the process. Did PowerChurch show a message saying that something failed and a log file was created? If so, that would be useful information to have in trying to work through this.

The log file is called PcSaveAs.log and is saved in the PowerChurch Plus program directory (by default C:\PowerChurch\PCPLUS14).

[mafmctr]

Sorry...no error message and no log file created.

I have a couple of test machines and we are actually getting different results....perhaps based on the version of Excel.

In the first test environment we have Excel 2010 installed (I know it's an old version!), two files (XLS & XLSX) are created and saved and the XLSX file is opened in Excel if I select that option on the export.

The second test environment with Excel 2016 I get the same result...two files (XLS & XLSX) are created and saved and the XLSX file is opened in Excel if I select that option on the export.

In the third test environment with Excel 2021 installed only the XLS file is saved and nothing automatically opens with that option selected. Curiously, in the recent file list there is an XLSX file listed but it cannot be opened and is not saved in the folder location.

[Zorak]

For those where the source XLS file is not being deleted, it could be that the Excel tool or antivirus/online backup application have the file open, since it was just created less than a second before. If the file is open, then the call to delete the file will fail. This isn't enough to trigger the error handler in the process, but it's not something we have seen in any of the different testing environments with any of a number of different Office versions installed.

For the Office 2021 machine, where the XLSX isn't being created and no error triggered, this is the command that is being run via command line:

Code: Select all

"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office16\excelcnv.exe" -oice "C:\Users\Zorak\Documents\pcreport.xls" "C:\Users\Zorak\Documents\pcreport.xlsx"

If you like, you can try running that command manually in a Windows command prompt (search for and run CMD from the Start menu)

With that, if you have a 32 bit version installed, Excel would be in the "Program Files (x86)" folder instead. Also, the file paths to the XLS/source and XLSX/destination files are my fictional Documents folder, which would need to be updated to that of an actual XLS file in an actual directory on that computer.

[mafmctr]

So I think the problem for 2021 Office is the path to excelcnv.exe. We do use the 32bit version and here is the path to the exe the workstation..."C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\root\Office16\excelcnv.exe". Your code did not work because the exe path was invalid on the workstation...but when I add the "\root" folder to the path it works perfectly. We do a standard install for Office...just take the defaults for all file locations.

[Zorak]

OK, you're right. Sorry about that!

In the code, because so many versions of Office install things in different locations, it starts at 64 bit - checks the standard path, if it doesn't exist, checks with /root in the path, if that doesn't exist, goes to 32 and starts the process over again. At the end of all of that, if it hasn't found the excelcnv.exe file, it returns that Excel isn't installed and wouldn't be trying to use it. It would instead show the message about LibreOffice being free and offering to send you to the download page.

Assuming you're not getting that message, then it is finding the excelcnv.exe, running the command, where something is silently failing without returning an error status.

In my original reply, I mentioned that we redesigned this process to use LibreOffice first if it's available. We did that specifically because this type of unpredictable behavior and not properly reported errors is unfortunately a lot more likely to happen in Microsoft Office.

Out of curiosity, what antivirus/security software are you running on this Office 2021 computer? We have seen some pretty aggressive behaviors lately in those as well. It may be that the file is being created, then immediately deleted by some other software. That would explain why it would show in the recent files list.

[mafmctr]

Correct, we are not getting any error/warning/information messages. I checked the Windows event logs and there are no related messages.

I am familiar with LibreOffice but the church staff prefers the Microsoft products.

Only have Microsoft Defender Antivirus installed (the version that comes with Windows 11)...no additional antivirus software running.

For our needs, we can use the XLS option which seems to consistently work as expected.

Thanks...