Contributions Report Locks up when e-mailing reports

[LarryF]

Hi, I am trying to send year-end contribution reports via e-mail using the All Contribution Statements report. The report sends a few statements (less than 10) and randomly locks up with the message :go ahead on the line for the contributor it is currently working on. An error message is appears on the screen...
PROGRAM: BULKMAIL.ADD_FILES
LINE: 5
ERROR: 1429
MESSAGE: OLE IDispatch exception code 0 from CSmail.Section.1:Internal Error (T4) (Using Build 20037) ..

When I try the Individual Contribution Statement, the program locks up with the :go ahead message as well.

I have the latest Maintenance Release installed and am still getting this error. Any Suggestions?
- Thanks!

[NeilZ]

Hi, I am trying to send year-end contribution reports via e-mail using the All Contribution Statements report. The report sends a few statements (less than 10) and randomly locks up with the message :go ahead on the line for the contributor it is currently working on. An error message is appears on the screen...
PROGRAM: BULKMAIL.ADD_FILES
LINE: 5
ERROR: 1429
MESSAGE: OLE IDispatch exception code 0 from CSmail.Section.1:Internal Error (T4) (Using Build 20037) ..

When I try the Individual Contribution Statement, the program locks up with the :go ahead message as well.

I have the latest Maintenance Release installed and am still getting this error. Any Suggestions?
- Thanks!

Larry, evidently you had the same type of problem last year, and this was the reply on the forum:

http://www.powerchurch.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3044

It looks like the error is popping up in the same location too.

The latest release is 10/27/2008. You said it sends out 10 statements, do these statements reach the addressees OK ??

A few extra questions:

1. Is this on a standalone machine, or are you using it as a client running off a 'server'?
2. Have you tried sending out a message to a group using Powerchurch ? Try that test and see what happens.

Hope this helps.

[LarryF]

Thanks Neil... Yes, any messages processed before the :go ahead message appears are sent OK and received by the people they are sent to. This is a once a year process for sending out contribution statments, so I only use this every year around this time.

Because this report is used to select the people it sends the report to, I can't create a group that it will send.

I have tried running this on a the PC that serves as our "server" and also on a completely isolated stand-alone PC. I was actually able to send out 2 groups of statements this year by limiting the number of people in each group to about 5. However, on the third run, even though I limited the run to 4 people, I got the :go ahead message and from that time on, I cannot even send an individual statement via e-mail. The report prints the statements just fine.

Do you know where the :go ahead message comes from... I often think that one of the Microsoft security updates may change the way programs, esp. ones that call e-mail are allowed to interact. We also use Norton internet Security and I have tried disabling it as well.
- Thanks!

[NeilZ]

\
Because this report is used to select the people it sends the report to, I can't create a group that it will send.

I understand, but try sending out a test message using the Personal Profiles, send message to group function. (I think that's the one)

You don't have to have a group setup, just send it out to all members telling them this is a test, there is no reason to reply.

[LarryF]

Thanks for the suggestion. I have never used this report but the E-Mail to a Group test worked just fine. The report sent 42 e-mails, pausing for 10 minutes after 25 were sent and then sending the rest. A report also printed of 17 individuals who did not have an e-mail address and a summary report printed of the 42 e-mails successfully sent.

So it looks like the e-mail part of the Contributions report is OK... maybe some type of problem with the generation of the PDF file?

[NeilZ]

Thanks for the suggestion. I have never used this report but the E-Mail to a Group test worked just fine. The report sent 42 e-mails, pausing for 10 minutes after 25 were sent and then sending the rest. A report also printed of 17 individuals who did not have an e-mail address and a summary report printed of the 42 e-mails successfully sent.

So it looks like the e-mail part of the Contributions report is OK... maybe some type of problem with the generation of the PDF file?

Well, that test did prove that the email portion of the program works. The next part of this debugging is up to the Powerchurch folks.

Jeff ?? Zorak ?? Any ideas from the error message ??

[Zorak]

I just had a chat with the Program Development folks.

Their best guess about this issue is that there is an antivirus / antispyware / active scanning program that is doing a deep scan of each of the PDFs prior to sending the message.

Here is the process we are looping through with each of the statements:

- Pull the contribution and pledge data
- Generate the report
- Generate the PDF
- Generate the e-mail
- Send the e-mail

When generating the e-mail and attaching the PDF, the file is locked open by the security software, causing the program to time out and error.

As a test to this theory, disable any active scanning / security software that you have running prior to sending the e-mails. If you aren't comfortable completely disabling the software, then define an exception or exclusion in the security software to not scan PDF files in the user's temp directory.

Let us know how it turns out

[LarryF]

I tried shutting off Norton and still no luck... so I completely uninstalled PC10.4. In the process of uninstalling, I noticed that Version 9 was still installed. While uninstalling version 9, I was given the message that the shared file CsMail.dll was going to be deleted... this was the name of the file the program was hanging up on!

After the reinstall, everything worked perfectly! Thanks for all the help and suggestions.

[NeilZ]

I tried shutting off Norton and still no luck... so I completely uninstalled PC10.4. In the process of uninstalling, I noticed that Version 9 was still installed. While uninstalling version 9, I was given the message that the shared file CsMail.dll was going to be deleted... this was the name of the file the program was hanging up on!

After the reinstall, everything worked perfectly! Thanks for all the help and suggestions.

Really ??? That's weird, I've had 9 and 10 installed on the same machine for years and never had a problem like this.

Glad to hear it works now, and I suspect that this solution will be added to the knowledge base for the future.