Help Center / Troubleshooting Software Problems /

This problem is due to a bug in Microsoft Office 365's 64-bit VBA compiler that affects all Microft applications that use 64-bit VBA code including Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

The solution is to restart the Wizard and it will usually startup without any problems on a subsequent try.

Microsoft is aware of the bug and is working on a patch. Once fixed by Microsoft it will automatically be resolved via a future patch to Microsoft Office.

Microsoft has patched their Word software on March 1, 2023 with the 2302 (Build 16130.20218) release.

Open Word on your computer with any document or a blank document and click the Account button in the lower left corner then click the Update Options button and finally click the Update Now option. Wait until Word has applied the latest update and then ensure it is at least build 2302.

Next you need to turn off the workaround in the Wizard software. Run the Proposal Pack Wizard and click the Preferences > Project Settings > Configure Document Creation and change the Word Insert Bug Workaround dropdown to "Normal Insert".

After doing these two things the Wizard will build documents going back to the original use of the InsertFile functionality.

Acrobat has a long history of rendering Word tables with colored borders in a way that looks like the lines are not consistently drawn. This is usually just a visual display issue on screen related to how Acrobat renders table cells with shading. When you print the PDF the final output looks correct.

One solution is to turn off the use of colored table borders completely. This may also give a cleaner and more modern look to your final documents and is a popular way to customize your documents. You can turn off the use of colored table borders in the Wizard's Document Styles button. Click the Edit Style button then on the Tables tab turn off the use of table borders.

You can search online for other solutions if you want to use colored table borders with colored table cells and have it appear correctly in PDF files on screen. The solutions vary and usually involve making time consuming manual updates to the PDF document. This is a known rendering issue with Adobe Acrobat.

There is a bug in Microsoft Word 2010 that can cause the background images in the generated documents to disappear. The documents are created correctly, however when they are opened in the .docx file format in some cases the background images disappear.

There are a few solutions to this problem. First, if you can upgrade your Microsoft Office software to the current version is the preferred solution.

Secondly, you can build up your document one page at a time in the Wizard software. For example, if you are generating a 5 page proposal do not build all 5 chapters into the document at once. Select your first chapter such as the Cover Letter and build your project. Then edit the current project and add a 2nd page such as the Title Page and rebuild the project document. The Wizard will insert the new page. Repeat this process to add all the pages.

Some of our newer graphic design themes include a mix of shape objects and photographs in the Title Page and Back Page. In Word 2010 sometimes Word will move a background shape in front of the photographs causing them to disappear. The photographs are still there but just hidden behind the shape object. You can double click the header of the page, select the background shape object then using the right mouse button set the order to the back. Moving it to the back will make the photographs reappear.

You may also see graphic bullet points disappear in some design themes in Word 2010 and replaced with a small outlined square. If this occurs you can turn off the use of graphic bullet points in the Button #1 Document Styles > Edit Style > Bullets tab.

Read the chapter in the Wizard manual titled "How do I Improve the Performance of the Wizard?". The Wizard installs with all of the default options which give you full access to over a thousand templates (proposal templates, contract templates, spreadsheets, sample proposals, etc.).

Read the Wizard manual chapter "How do I Setup My Own Short List of Templates?" and setup the Custom database type using just the subset of chapter templates you will always use for your projects instead of the default General Business Proposal database that includes all the thousands of chapter templates. Setting up a custom subset of chapters will improve the interface performance.

Because the Wizard has to load all of these lists into its screens and continually search through all of these lists as you are using it, it can be sluggish, especially on older and slower computers. Usually the bottleneck is the speed of your hard drive and the overhead of Microsoft Office and Windows.

The easiest way to improve performance of the Wizard is to run it on a newer computer with a fast processor and install the Proposal Kit products on a fast SSD hard drive.

If you have altered the default setting of your security in an older version of Word and increased the security to "Very High" you can try decreasing it to the default setting.

Some situations may cause the certificate to not work properly such as using an outdated Windows operating system that does not support SHA-254 security certificates, old expired version of our Wizard, altering our Wizard document and invalidating the certificate, accidentally disabling our macros, accidentally telling Word not to trust us as the publisher, having expired security certificates on your computer, missing required security certificates, etc.:

A quick fix is to do the following in Word 2007 and greater:

1) Click the Office Button (top left corner of your Word screen) (in Word 2007), in Word 2010 and greater click the File menu, then -> Word Options -> Trust Center -> Trust Center Settings -> Trusted Locations

2) Click "Add new location" then browse to where your Proposal Pack Wizard was installed. By default this will be C:\ProposalKit\ProposalPack

If you still have problems with the macros and/or certificate validation, such as the Options button in Word disappears without letting you click it, there is a known bug in Microsoft Word that causes the macro security option button to disappear before giving you the option to enable the macros. If this is occurring, DO NOT run the Proposal Pack Wizard by double clicking the green box icon on your desktop. Instead, locate the Wizard document on your hard drive and open it from there. The difference is that the green box icon is setup to auto-run the Wizard macro, which does not occur when you open the Wizard document directly from the install folder. The default install folder and Wizard file is:

c:\ProposalKit\ProposalPack\ProposalPackWizard_Win_V#.docm (for Word 2010 and greater)

Once opened directly from this file, you will be able to click the macro Options button and enable the macros. Once enabled, you will be able to run the Wizard from the desktop icon.

Click here for additional help information for setting up and running the Wizard.

If you did a custom installation of your Microsoft Office/Word software you MUST also install the Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) component. The VBA component is Word's macro processing system. If you do not install this component our Wizard will not run and you will see error messages about the macros or that there is bad content in the macros.

To resolve the problem run your Microsoft Office/Word installation program again and either do a complete install, or if you are doing a custom install again, make sure to find and install the VBA component.

Click here for additional help information for setting up and running the Wizard.

You did not enable the Wizard macro the first time you opened the Wizard document per the instructions. Then, whenever you double click the desktop icon to run the Wizard, Word is not giving you the opportunity to click the button. This is because of a bug in Microsoft Word when a macro is run from a shortcut for a disabled macro.

You can either uninstall the Wizard and reinstall it. Then when the Wizard document opens the first time make sure to enable the macro properly. Or follow the instructions below to open the Wizard word document without invoking the macro automatically:

1) Run Microsoft Word.

2) Click the "File" option then click the "Open" option. Then browse to the folder where the Wizard was installed. This should be in your c:\ProposalKit\ProposalPack folder.

3) Open the Wizard document "ProposalPackWizard_Win_V#" file.

4) Once opened you will see the Wizard document with the title "Proposal Pack Wizard" at the top. Follow the instructions on the Wizard document for enabling the macro. This is a one-time setup requirement before you can run the Wizard.

Click the "Add-Ins" tab in the Word toolbar. It is usually located around the top right hand part of the Word toolbar. Then click the "ProposalPack.Wizard.RunWizard" button.

Click here for additional help information for setting up and running the Wizard.

You can run the Wizard as follows:

1) Open the Wizard document in Word by double clicking the green box icon on your desktop or by browsing to the file using your Word's Open command. Make sure to open the Wizard file with the .docm file extension (Macro Enabled Word Document).

2) At the message under the toolbar that says "Security Alert. Your security settings have disabled macros from running.". Click the "Enable Content" button or the "Options" button (depending on which message you see). Then click the one of the radio buttons "Enable this Content" or "Trust all documents from this publisher", then click the Okay button.

3) You will see the Wizard document open in the Word window. Now click the "Add-Ins" tab in your Word toolbar. Then click the "ProposalPack.Wizard.RunWizard" button.

An alternate way to run the Wizard is click your "Developer" tab in Word, then click the "Macros" button (the big green arrow), then click the "RunWizard" entry, then click the "Run" button.

4) At this point you will be prompted with a few questions. When you get to the question about searching your hard drive for installed Proposal Packs you may or may not encounter an error message. If you click Yes and you get an error message '5111', read the Q&A message below to resolve the problem.

Click here for additional help information for setting up and running the Wizard.

We have seen this problem with some users who have virtualization software installed on their computers for running multiple versions of Word or multiple operating systems (such as Mac and Windows) on the same computer. Your computer has been configured so that it is not correctly associating Microsoft Word with shortcut links that invoke macros in Word documents.

This can also happen if you are running an unregistered or unlicensed copy of Microsoft Word. If you are not running a properly licensed and registered version of Microsoft Word you will have to resolve that issue first before we can assist with the operation of the Wizard.

If you are running a "student" or "starter" version of Word/Office, note that these versions of Word are low-cost stripped down versions that do not support the running of macros. This means since the Wizard is a macro, it will not run. You will need to upgrade your Word/Office to a full retail version.

This may also happen if your Windows operating system has lost the application that used to be used to open .DOCX or .DOCM file extensions. For example, if you had OpenOffice.org installed as your office software which was associated with opening .DOCX and .DOCM files. Then you installed Microsoft Word but did not let Word change the file associations for .DOCX and .DOCM files to Microsoft Word. Then finally, you uninstalled OpenOffice.org - thereby removing the application associated with .DOCX and .DOCM files. Now your system is in a state where you do have a Word processor installed, but your Windows OS does not have associations between it and the .DOCX and .DOCM file extensions. This can cause unexpected behavior such as My Computer opening by default when you try and click a shortcut to a .DOCX or .DOCM file. The solution is to simply reset Microsoft Word to be the application associated with .DOCX and .DOCM files. See your Windows OS help system for "file associations" on how to repair this.

This may also happen if you installed the Wizard BEFORE you installed your Word/Office software. In this case the Wizard desktop shortcut icon labeled "Run Proposal Pack Wizard" will not have been setup with the path to your Word processor correctly. You can fix this by making sure your Word/Office software is installed first, then uninstall the Wizard and run the installer again to setup the shortcut links correctly. You will know this is the problem if you check the "Properties" screen of the shortcut link and check the Target it is pointing to. If it does not include the path to the WinWord.exe program and the path to the Wizard word document the shortcut link was not configured.

This also happens if you installed a newer version of Microsoft Office then uninstalled the old version. The Wizard desktop shortcut icon will still have a link to the old copy of WinWord.exe which doesn't exist anymore. You can rebuild the desktop shortcut by manually running the Wizard and rebuild the icon. See this video for more details.

How to Repair the Desktop Shortcut Icon

You can still run the Wizard as follows:

1) Run Microsoft Word for Windows.

2) Click the "File" option then click the "Open" option. Then browse to the folder where the Wizard was installed. This should be in your c:\ProposalKit\ProposalPack folder. If you are using Parallels on the Mac and you cannot locate the Wizard documents here make sure you are doing it from within the "My Computer" window. Some Parallels configurations on Mac can hide the Wizard files on the Mac side.

3) Open the Wizard document "ProposalPackWizard_Win_V#" file.

4) Once opened you will see the Wizard document with the title "Proposal Pack Wizard" at the top. If you have not yet enabled the Wizard macro, follow the instructions on the Wizard document for enabling the macro. This is a one-time setup requirement before you can run the Wizard.

Click the "Add-Ins" tab in the Word toolbar. It is usually located around the top right hand part of the Word toolbar. Then click the "ProposalPack.Wizard.RunWizard" button.

If you are able to run the Wizard manually by directly opening the Wizard's word document and running the macro. Once you have resolved the problem (such as installing the correct version of Word, or repairing the .DOCX and .DOCM file extension) you can use the Wizard to repair the desktop icon automatically instead of doing a full uninstall/reinstall of the Wizard. With the Wizard running and on the home page of the Wizard interface click Preferences -> Tools -> Repair Tools -> Repair Desktop Shortcut.

When you start to create a proposal the Wizard will hand off control to other instances of Word as it opens and closes multiple documents. The title of the Wizard's Word document will say "(Not Responding)" while it is waiting for the processing to complete. DO NOT CLOSE THE WIZARD otherwise you will terminate it before the documents are complete. If you have a slow computer and/or have selected a large collections of documents the process will take longer.

First try creating a new project and only select 1 or 2 templates then create the project and wait until you see the final "Process Complete" message. Then go back to your project and run it again and wait for the same message.

If the Wizard appears to be locked up in the same location each time you try to create a document and you are terminating Word due to it not being responsive it could be that a dialog box with a message is open that you are not seeing that is waiting to be closed. One way to determine if there is a dialog box waiting to be closed is to click your Word document and if you hear a beep sound that is a sign there is a dialog box open that must be closed before the Wizard will continue. While Word opens all dialog boxes in the foreground there have been cases where Word opens a dialog box that is hidden from view behind another Window, or on different monitor if using multiple monitors. Try starting the Wizard dragged over to another side of your screen as far as possible before generating your document and see if a message box then becomes visible. Since this is a rare glitch in Word/Windows when it occurs if possible try running the Wizard on a different computer or ensure your Word/Office software has been updated to the most current version.

This can happen if you are running an unregistered or unlicensed copy of Microsoft Word. If you are not running a properly licensed and registered version of Microsoft Word you will have to resolve that issue first before we can assist with the operation of the Wizard.

If you are running a trial version of Microsoft Word you will have to purchase a license and get your key code from Microsoft before continuing.

When running an unregistered or unlicensed copy of Microsoft Word/Office, Word/Office may disable access to some components of Word/Office making them unavailable when Proposal Pack Wizard tries to access those components of Word/Office.

You may also be running a limited edition version of Word such as "Microsoft Works" or "Microsoft Starter" which does not have all of the features of the full retail version of Microsoft Word.

This can also occur randomly when Word is in an unexpected state, such as low memory conditions, or if you have interfered with the Wizard as it is processing a proposal. Such as clicking the Wizard windows as it is running causing the Wizard to loose focus on the document is processing. Trying to open another Word document while the Wizard is processing documents and so on. If the problem only occurs once and is not repeatable, it is probably not an issue.

Normally our Wizard will open and close a number of files while it is processing your document. You should not have to interact with the Wizard or Word at all until the final "Process Complete" message is displayed.

If you are getting error or warning messages from our Wizard such as a Warning Message #623, Command failed and there is a Word document open that asks you to save it then something is interfering with our Wizard.

This can happen if another 3rd-party Add-in is installed in your Word/Office software that is activating and trying to take over one of our documents when our Wizard is trying to process it.

We have seen cases of 3rd-party Add-ins such as:

• "Acer docs Word Add-in"
• "Acer ABDocs"
• "AcerCloud Word Addin"
• "OneNote Notes about Word Documents"
• Other mailing label and office document management Add-ins

These may come pre-installed on new Windows computers that can interfere with our Wizard. Simply disable that add-in or any other 3rd-party add-ins you may have installed until you determine which one may be causing the problem.

Open your Word program and click the File -> Options -> Add-Ins screen. Click the "Go" button next to the COM Add-Ins drop down and then uncheck any checked Add-Ins. Then run the Wizard again and build a document. If it works then the problem was caused by an Add-In. You can then start enabling your unchecked Add-Ins one at a time running the Wizard each time to build a document to identify which one is causing the problems. Then either leave that Add-In disabled if you do not need it. Or disable it temporarily while using the Wizard.

In some cases users with foreign language versions of Windows installed that use the comma "," instead of the period "." for floating point numbers in the decimal place have gotten this error message when running the Wizard.

The latest Proposal Pack Wizard fixes this problem by detecting when Word is not correctly converting a page size (i.e. "8.5" inches to the point size 612), instead Word is dropping the decimal and converting the 8.5 inches to 85 inches.

Download and install the current version of the Wizard to resolve this issue.

If you have checked the box in the Proposal Styles edit screen labled "Replace Page Graphics (if default style graphics are to be changed)". Uncheck this box.

This feature is only meant for developers who have created a custom collection of up to hundreds of custom graphics to be inserted into all of the Proposal Pack template pages. This is an old feature of the Wizard which was more commonly used years ago when there were only a small collection of documents in the Proposal Packs. Now that there are over 2200 templates with custom graphics, this feature is rarely used or needed by developers.

There have also been changes to Microsoft Word's underlying Visual Basic for Applications system which has caused this feature to fail on some newer versions of Word.

Uncheck this box to make this error message go away. If you have created some custom graphics to replace the graphics in your Proposal Pack simply open the Proposal Pack templates in Word, delete our graphics manually and insert your custom ones and then save your documents. This way you only have to do the graphics replacement once instead of every time you create a proposal.

Either your Windows registry settings have restricted access or the Wizard files installed on your hard drive have restricted access or the Wizard INI file that is trying to be accessed does not exist anymore.

If you changed the location of the Wizard database files or reconfigured the Wizard in some way that it cannot locate one of its INI files this error may occur. In this case reset the Wizard paths or reinstall the Wizard to repair the settings and files.

If you are running Windows use your desktop to find the C:\Program Files folder. Right click the "ProposalKit" folder and select "Properties". Click the "Security" tab. Click the "Edit" button to change permissions. Click your logged in user name then check the boxes to enable Full Control and Modify. Click the "Okay" button and wait for the settings to be applied to all of the files.

The Proposal Pack Wizard also stores information in a registry key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\ProposalPackWizV##. This key is created by the installer program when you first install the Wizard on your computer. If you installed the Wizard as an administrator and then logged in later to use the Wizard as a user without permissions to access the registry. Or if you have somehow set the registry key to Special permissions, you must go back to the registry and assign "Administrator Full" permission.

To change the registry permissions search your Microsoft Help system for "permissions" and click the help topics on changing registry settings.

If you are running Windows here is how to do it:

1) run the "regedit" program from your Windows start -> run button or command prompt.

2) Highlight the key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\ProposalPackWizV##

3) From the toolbar menu click Edit -> Permissions

4) Assign Full permissions.

If you tried to move your Proposal Kit install folder manually from one computer to another, or are trying to run the Proposal Pack Wizard remotely from a computer that it was not installed on it cannot find a DLL that was copied to the Windows system folder during the original installation. Either run the Wizard from the original computer it was installed on, move the missing DLL from the old computer to the new one, or reinstall the Proposal Pack Wizard from the original installer program. Note that the Wizard installer program will setup a registry key, copy one or more DLLs to the Windows system folder and will register an Active X COM DLL. If you are trying to move your Proposal Pack Wizard software to a new computer all of these components must also be moved. It may be easier to reinstall it on the new computer.

Microsoft sometimes changes the underlying programming, data types, currency formats, etc. for various international versions of Windows, Word and Office. Our Proposal Pack Wizard operates using the Word/Office system and is designed based on the English language version. There have been isolated cases of international versions displaying unexpected error messages.

The problem is most likely related to a configuration change Microsoft has made in the international version of Windows and/or the international version of Word/Office you are using.

First try using the English language version of Windows, Word and/or Office to determine if this makes the problem go away. If this does not resolve the problem or you are unable to test with the English language version of your Microsoft software contact us for assistance. We may be able to help you remotely diagnose the problem. Note that the Wizard is only officially supported in the English language (which means we only officially support the English language versions of Microsoft software). We will try to resolve any problems we hear about with non-English language versions however to do so we may require your assistance to help diagnose the problem as we do not typically have test environments for other languages available.

First try to download it again and make sure your download progress bar shows the download was complete. There are no known problems with any files stored on our web server. All download problems are related to the end users computer, security software settings, web browser or internet connection.

If you get an "Access Denied", "File Not Found" or "Feature Transfer" error related to a .tmp file while the installer is running this means a 3rd-party program or process is running in the background and is opening the installer's temporary working files while the installer is running.

This is typically due to virus scanning software or any other background software that is designed to operate on files newly added to your computer. Whatever 3rd party program is running in the background needs to be disabled to allow the installer to run properly.

• If you are running "Webroot" security software this is the most common cause of this problem. Turn off the Realtime Shield feature of Webroot then run the installer again.
  
  
• If you are running the Stuffit Expander "ArcNameService.exe" this is known to cause this problem. Disable this service in your Windows Control Panel.

First try disabling any security scanning software, if that does not work and you cannot determine what is interfering with the installer do the following:

1) Download the Process Monitor program from Microsoft and run it. Make sure the "Capture Events" in the File menu is turned on.

2) Run the Proposal Kit installer again and as soon as the error occurs click the Process Monitor window and click the File -> Save button. This will save a log of all of the programs that were running on your computer and all files they were accessing. You should also abort the installer program at this point.

3) Use the Process Monitor's Find menu option to search for the name of the file that was in the "Access Denied" error message. You will first find it in the log being created and operated on by the installer program (this is okay). Then you should also find whatever other program was operating on that same file further in the log. This will tell you what program is interfering with the installer. At this point you can disable that program and run the installer again. You can also contact us or the InstallShield company and let them know what program was interfering with the installer.

If you get an error such as a "feature transfer error" running the Windows installers, this could also mean you are logged-in as a user with restricted access rights and the installer is not being given access to areas of your Windows computer it needs (such as your registry). Login as an administrator with full access rights, then run the installer programs.

If you get an error such as as a "Catastrophic Failure" or a message that the file is not 64-bit compatible these are symptoms of a corrupted download file. A file is corrupted by being altered by something on your computer during the download process or by truncating the download file by not completely downloading it. In these cases delete the downloaded file and try again and make sure the file is completely downloaded.

If you get warnings that you can't run the app and you see the term(s) "app" or "SmartScreen" in the message you probably have set your Windows security to block apps from running that did not come from the Windows Store. The Wizard is a standard desktop installer program and not a Windows Store app.

Also, some ISPs and 3rd party download programs are known to corrupt downloaded files as they are being saved to your computer. This could be caused by a bug in software that is trying to speed up the normal download process. If you have problems downloading more than once try the following:

• Try downloading from a different computer. It may be a configuration problem on your computer.
• Try downloading from a different web browser. It may be a 3rd party download tool on your browser.
• Try downloading from a different internet connection. It may be your internet service providers problem.
• Check your Windows Control Panel > Update & Security > Windows Security > App & Browser Control settings.
• Check you are not running a 32-bit version of the Windows OS. 64-bit is the standard Windows OS install.

Everyone who download our products downloads the same files and we never have had a case where the files located on our server were "corrupted".

All cases of users downloading our files and getting corrupted copies are due to a problem on the users system. First check these possible causes:

• Do not use third-party "download accelerator" tools - they frequently corrupt download files.
• Make sure you let the download complete - if the download was stopped prematurely it will be corrupt.
• The proprietary AOL browser has had a history of corrupting download files. Don't use AOL's browser.
• Proxy servers have been known to cause corrupt downloads, if using proxy server, turn it off.
• Make sure you are saving the download file to your hard drive, DO NOT "run" it from our server.

First, just try to download the file again. If it is corrupted multiple times then you have something configured on your system that is causing the problem.

Second, try using a different web browser or a different computer. Most of the time using a different computer or web browser that isn't configured in the same way will work.

If you just purchased a product and are trying to get to the download area and you are getting a page not found or Socket Error message after you enter the userid and password - and you are using Google Chrome there is an easy solution.

Simply click the refresh button on your Google Chrome toolbar and the download page will appear. This is due to a bug in the Google Chrome browser.

You can also use a different web browser such as Firebox, Internet Explorer, Safari or Opera for example. None of these other browser have any problems logging into password protected web sites.

Follow the help instructions on the page to determine if you have old outdated login information or if you are just not typing the userid and password correctly.

The Proposal Kit products are collections of documents and the interfaces include links to those documents. These documents are Word format templates, Excel format spreadsheets, Acrobat PDF documents and various other files.

You need to have software installed that can open those files such as office software with a word processor and spreadsheet program and a PDF viewer. There are many applications on the market that perform these tasks. The most commonly used packages are Microsoft Office and Adobe Acrobat.

Sometimes another program will take over the original programs file associations and lead to problems such as links to those files not operating correctly anymore.

The Windows operating system is known to replace your installed applications with its own programs which can cause these types of problems. For example, if you have Adobe Acrobat installed and it used to be opening your Acrobat PDF documents you may notice that when you open a PDF document it now opens in the Edge browser instead. And when you try to run our Wizard to view a PDF document you get nothing opening. This is caused by Microsoft having taken over the application associated with the .PDF file extension.

You can fix this by either reinstalling your software such as Adobe Acrobat or use the Windows 'File Associations' tool in your Windows Control Panel to change the .PDF file extension back to the Acrobat program.

You need to associate the .DOCX file extension with the Word application. Normally this is setup by Word or Office when you install those applications. Consult your operating system help for how to set a file type association to an application then associate the DOCX file extension with the Word application.

Try right clicking any file on your computer with a .DOCX file extension (which is a Word document) and set the "Open With" program to be Microsoft Word, then reinstall the Wizard.

If you are using Word/Office 2010 or greater you should also have the .DOCM and .DOCX file extensions associated with the Word application.

This problem does not occur very often, and usually only occurs on old versions of Microsoft Word such as Word 2007.

Note that the Proposal Pack Wizard is only supported on Word 2010 and greater. If you are getting a compile error first check your version of Word. If you are using Word 2000, Microsoft Office/Word is missing a key function that our Wizard uses that was not introduced by Microsoft until Word 2003. Past versions of the Wizard supported Word 2003 and may still work however we do not officially support or test for Word 2003 or Word 2007 anymore.

If you are getting a compile error running the latest version of Word 2010 or greater in 64-bit mode, make sure you have the current version of the Wizard. The most recent Wizard includes a patch for a compile error due to code changes Microsoft introduced in this platform.

The problem is caused by your Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) component being too old, corrupted or configured in a non-standard way. Since this usually occurs on very old installations of Word, most likely another application installed on your system altered one of the shared components of the VBA system which comes with Microsoft Office/Word. This causes functions in the Wizard to not be able to find the correct matches to the DLLs in the Microsoft Word/Office components.

The resolution is to either upgrade your Word to a more current version, or completely re-install your version of Word/Office from the original installation files or CD. You may be able to resolve it by doing a repair of your Word/Office and reinstalling only the VBA component. Consult your Word help system or contact Microsoft support for assistance. Contact us for assistance as we may be able to help you remotely debug and locate the problem.

Another possible cause is that a DLL is missing or is not registered. The Wizard uses 3rd party DLLs for some of its features. If those DLLs are missing this can cause a compile error when the Wizard is run. One cause of this is if you moved the Wizard from one computer to another and did not copy the rest of the required files. It is recommended you reinstall the Wizard using the original installer program instead of manually trying to move it between computers as you will loose required DLLs and registry settings that are setup by the installer program.

You are probably using an extremely small monitor resolution such as 800x600. First, make sure you are using the most recent Proposal Pack Wizard. Some Wizard interface screens were recently reorganized to work better on small monitor resolutions. There are still a few screens that will not fit on an 800x600 monitor, however those are screens only used for configuring preferences that are typically not used by most customers. The best results require at least a 800x768 monitor resolution.

If the height of your screen is the minimum size of 768 and some screens are still cut off then you have also set the font size on your computer settings to a higher size setting (such as 125% or 150%). If you have increased your text size beyond the default setting of 100% try setting your text size back to 100%.

You can change the font text size settings and desktop resolution settings by right clicking your mouse on your Windows desktop and selecting 'Screen resolution'.

If you are using a laptop with a wider screen that is separated from your keyboard you can also try using the 'Portrait' orientation and turning your screen sideways. This also makes it easier to do word processing in general as you will have a more complete view of your word documents on very small screen resolution settings.

This error message occurs in rare cases in some older installations of Microsoft Office due to a function that the Wizard calls within the Office system that does not exist on your installed version of Microsoft Office.

First, try downloading any Service Packs and updates available for your edition of Microsoft Office from the Microsoft web site and get your office software completely updated. This usually fixes the problem. Go to the Microsoft.com web site and search for "Service Packs" for your version of Word/Office.

If you are unable to update your edition of Microsoft Office you can disable the Wizard features that are being called when the error occurs manually as follows.

If you are in the Expert Edition of the Wizard an have enabled the Expert Mode. Just click the Preferences button and the Translations tab then uncheck the "Enable language translation features" box.

This has also occurred when installing Microsoft Word's Chinese conversion feature that apparently uses an older or alternate version of a VBA DLL that is missing a function that exists in all other versions of Word's VBA component.

If the error is occurring before you can disable the language translation features you can manually disable them as follows:

Open the c:\ProposalKit\ProposalPack\Database_v#\Translations.ini file and change the following lines:

[Languages]
Enabled=1

to

[Languages]
Enabled=0

This situation occurs in rare cases usually in older installations of Microsoft Office. This is usually due to an outdated version of Microsoft Word. Usually a version of Word that the Wizard normally works with, but your installation has either become corrupted or never had patches or service packs updated.

First, try downloading any Service Packs and updates available for your edition of Microsoft Office from the Microsoft web site and get your office software completely updated. This usually fixes the problem. Go to the Microsoft.com web site and search for "Service Packs" for your version of Word/Office.

You may also have to completely reinstall your version of Word/Office. If you still have your original Word/Office install CD or DVD, reinstall your Office software and then download and install any available Service Packs for it from the the Microsoft.com web site.

If you made any customizations to the installation of the Wizard or other Proposal Kit products (such as trying to install them on a flash drive or a network drive, etc.). Reinstall them using the default locations and see of that resolves the problem.

You have another computer you can try the Wizard on, install the Wizard on a 2nd computer and test it. If it works on a 2nd computer, the problem is related to a problem in the setup of your computer.

If none of these resolve the issue, you may have to upgrade your outdated version of Microsoft Office to a newer version, or run the Wizard on another computer.

When operating normally the Wizard opens, saves then closes documents during the process of building your project without you having to do anything while it is working. If this process stops and Word is showing you a 'Save As' dialog box that is a problem to fix in your Word/Office software. Our Wizard usually also generates an error after you see the Save As option during the document assembly process.

We have seen numerous cases of third-party Add-ins called "Acer docs Word Add-in", "AcerCloud Word Addin" and "Acer ABDocs" that may come pre-installed on new Windows computers that can interfere with our Wizard. Disable that add-in or any other third-party add-ins you may have installed until you determine which one may be causing the problem.

If you have any other Word Add-in with the word "Acer" in it disable it. This may also be caused by the OneNote for Word add-in.

If you are using Word/Office 2007 there is a known bug in Office 2007 that can cause valid signatures to display as invalid signatures. Proposal Kit does not support Office 2007 anymore.

Another cause is if you have an outdated version of Windows such as Windows Vista without the Service Pack 1 and Service Pack 2 from Microsoft installed. If you are using an outdated version of Windows check if you have the Service Packs installed. This is unnessary as the Wizard will still run on any Windows system that for whatever reason may be displaying an invalid certificate message.

Another cause of this problem is outdated root CA certificates that are maintained by your Windows operating system and can be found in your certificate store in Internet Explorer. You may need to update any root CA certificates that are expired.

Another possible cause is that sometimes opening a Word document in a version of Word that is different than the one the document was signed with can cause the certificate to show as invalid. Opening the Wizard in the most current version of Word may cause the signature to display as valid.

An expired or invalid signature in the Wizard document will not cause any problems. So you do not need to resolve this issue unless you just want the message to display as a valid signature.

In some cases the system needs to verify the signature over the Internet. If there is no Internet connection or the request is blocked by a firewall then the signature may display as invalid.

Microsoft removed support for SH1 SHA254 certificates which impacted older versions of Microsoft Word. If you are running an older version of Word such as Word 2007, 2010 or 2013 your outdated installation of Word may show an invalid certificate message on Word documents signed with Word 2016 or greater such as our Wizard. An invalid certificate message will not cause any problems. If you want the message to go away, you will have to upgrade your Microsoft Office software to the most current edition. This is only if you are using an outdated version of our Wizard software that was previously signed with SH1 level certificates. All current version of the Wizard software are signed with SH2 SHA256 level certificates.

A recent Microsoft security update introduced a problem with the Microsoft VBA functions used to write external text files.

Find and rollback either Windows update KB3213555 or KB3213624 which is the Microsoft Word 2010 Security Update.

When you try and run the Wizard and a message saying to insert a smart card occurs is caused by a 3rd party program on your computer. A program from IBM called Rational Doors is known to cause this. You can fix this from stopping the Wizard from running by adding the Wizard's install folder as a Trusted Location in the Word Trust Center Settings. Click your Word Options button and find the Trust Center Settings screen then click the Trusted Locations button and browse to the Wizard install folder which is c:\ProposalKit\ProposalPack by default and add it as a trusted location. Close the Wizard then restart it and it should run.

Microsoft Word 2016 and greater will open Excel spreadsheets in Read Only mode if they are linked to a Word document using OLE links and that Word document is already opened. Close the Word document and Excel spreadsheets then open the Excel spreadsheets first. Then open the Word document. The Wizard software will open them in the correct sequence however it’s possible to manually open documents in the other order. This only occurs with Proposal Kit generated documents using the dynamic Excel spreadsheet linking feature that puts OLE links between Excel spreadsheets and Word documents. This feature and how it operates is part of Microsoft Office and not under our control.

Sometimes a 'Macros are Disabled' message displays on a Word document that does not have macros. This sometimes happens when a Word document with macros is already open in the background. This message is only a glitch in Microsoft Office that will go away if you close the macro enabled document. The only document included with or created by Proposal Kit products that has an embedded macro program is our Wizard's Word document.

QuoteWerks by default uses their own proprietary PDF convertor when they output the final quote using a layout file. Layout files are usually standard Word format documents such as those created by Proposal Kit. Sometimes QuoteWerks does not properly output their PDF file and some Word document features such as custom designed title pages with graphics, photographs and shape objects are located out of place in the final PDF file.

The solution is to output your QuoteWerks file in Word format and then use Word or Adobe Acrobat to save the PDF version. This makes use of Word's or Acrobat's PDF convertor which will create the final layout of the PDF correctly.

Consult with your QuoteWerks support representative on how to output to a Word format file if you need assistance with your QuoteWerks software if these instructions do not match your version of QuoteWerks.

First save your Proposal Kit created layout file which can be in a Word format file into the QuoteWerks > Resources > Templates folder on your hard drive. If you are running QuoteWerks, close the program then restart QuoteWerks after you copy the file into this folder.

After restarting QuoteWerks click the "Links" tab then click the drop-down arrow next to the orange circle and select the file name that matches the file you copied as your layout. It may say "UNSAVED" in front of the file name when it asks you if you want to save it. You can save this in the QuoteWerks > Resources folder or wherever you want to save this new layout file. In the new document dialog box set the folder where you want your merged output file to be saved to then click the Ok button.

Now you have the layout file saved as a linked file ready to use to merge into (similarly to how layout files are generally used). But now it is in the QuoteWerks system in a way that you can output your quote to a Word format file instead of a PDF file.

To generate a Word format quote now you can go to the "Links" tab and you will see your template as a Linked Resource. Select the template then right-click your mouse to bring up the menu. Click the "Save New Copy & Merge Word Document" option. Since this will be a merged and completed quote you should probably save it into a different folder than the folder containing the original template. Select a folder on your hard drive where you want the final output file to be saved and click the Ok button.

Because QuoteWerks will still be doing some of its own custom processing while it generates the output file it is possible QuoteWerks may still alter some of the layout. Either manually fix any formatting changes or try altering your template as needed until it all comes out of QuoteWerks correctly.

If you have turned on QuoteWerks remapping features the Wizard will also make formatting changes to the document to fix known issues that QuoteWerks has with working with our documents. Some of these formatting changes are moving our background design theme shape and picture options from the header of the Title Page and Back Page into the body of those pages, all shape and picture objects have their alignment changed from being measured from the edge of the page to the edge of the first column, and some of our design themes will have their background watermark designs altered slightly.