 |
Known Issues |
Web
Survey Form Issues
When
a respondent clicks the Submit Responses button in the web
survey form this message appears:
"Your email server modified this web form in such a way that it is now unusable."
Windows™
Security Issues
Firewall Issues
Microsoft
Excel™ Issue
Microsoft
Word™ Issues
Video
Issue
Performance
Issues
Web
Survey Form Issue: When
a respondent clicks the Submit Responses button or navigation button in the web survey form this
message appears: "Your email server modified this web form in such a way that it is now unusable.",
or nothing happens at all.
This error occurs under
either of the following conditions:
A survey author distributes their web survey as an email attachment either to a webmaster
or a web survey respondent, and the email server through which the email passes is a
Microsoft Exchange server that has a security policy pertaining to HTML file attachments which automatically alters the web survey form, rendering the web survey form useless.
A web survey respondent accesses their web survey as an email attachment via a web-based
email client, particularly Outlook Web Access (also known as OWA, which is a feature of the
Microsoft Exchange enterprise email solution) and the Microsoft Exchange server used by OWA
has a security policy pertaining to HTML file attachments which automatically alters the web
survey form, rendering the web survey form useless.
In plain speak, a Microsoft email server can in
some cases be configured by a well-meaning email administrator to muck around
with your web survey form when it is sent to your respondents (or
to a webmaster who will then post it to your web site) as
an email attachment.
In geek speak, your web
survey form (which is a commonly used web component known as a an "HTML
form") when sent as an email attachment via Microsoft
Exchange Server it is automatically altered by Exchange so that the HTML FORM SUBMIT statement is
changed from METHOD="POST" to METHOD="GET".
This is incompatible with the web survey response processing program
that resides on surveygold.com and causes it to display the
aforementioned message to the respondent.
The root cause of this is out of the
hands of the survey respondent, the survey author and out of the hands of Golden Hills
Software, the makers of SurveyGold. Rather, it is entirely in the
hands of the Exchange Server administrator in the survey author's
organization or the in the respondent's organization.
It occurs when the survey author distributes the SurveyGold
web survey form as an email attachment and the email subsequently
passes through a Microsoft Exchange Server that is configured
with specific security settings affecting attachments that are
HTML files. This can happen whether the HTML attachment is
submitted to by the author or opened by the respondent using Exchange Server via the Microsoft Outlook software
running on a workstation or via Outlook Web Access (OWA) running
in a web browser.
If you are technically inclined and/or
wish to forward this information along to your Exchange email
administrator so that they can correct this situation, please
review details from Exchange administrators who have reported
the issue to Microsoft or
for information on this issue from Microsoft.
The
Solution To This Issue
A SurveyGold software update on March 21,
2008 resolves this issue. Simply acquire the update, re-save
your web survey form via the Setup Survey tab in SurveyGold and
redistribute this newly created web survey form.
The software update resolves this issue by
adding special code to the web survey form produced by
SurveyGold that circumvents this issue. This solution works for
any web browser that allows JavaScript to run. (Note: The
ability to run JavaScript is can be enabled/disabled by the web
browser user. So, if your respondents report that the problem
persists after applying this solution, it will be necessary for
you to consider using the work-around described next.
The
Work-Around To This Issue
The work-around to this is to do one
of the following when sending an email to your respondents
requesting their participation in your web survey:
Whenever possible, distribute your web survey form by placing it on a web server as opposed
to sending it as an email attachment. Then send an email to your respondents that includes a
link with the web address in the message text so that they can click on the address have the
web survey form displayed in their web browser.
Do not distribute your web survey form via email attachments that pass through a Microsoft
Exchange email server. As an alternative, consider sending your web survey form as an
attachment via another email server (e.g., Google Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, etc.) or via a third-party
file transfer site such
as www.YouSendIt.com
.
Firewall
Issue: When clicking on "Get Web Responses" an error message appears
or nothing happens.
This error is normally a result of your firewall (computer hardware or
software responsible for monitoring Internet traffic) denying your
SurveyGold software access to the Internet when it tries to access the
Internet from your computer. Here is how to resolve this problem:
Check with your
network administrator and ask them the following question:
"Do we use a proxy server to
connect to the Internet?"
If the answer is yes, then follow-up by asking your network
administrator the following three questions:
"What is the proxy server TCP/IP address?"
Your administrator may give you a name for the proxy server. This will not do.
You need to know the TCP/IP address of the proxy server, a series of numbers separated by three dots.
"What is the proxy server port number?"
"What user ID and password (if any) is used to gain access to the proxy server?"
After you have the
answers to these questions, complete the following steps:
STEP 1
Click the Help
button from the SurveyGold main tool bar.
STEP 2
Click the
Change SurveyGold Preferences button.
STEP 3
Select the
Proxy Server tab.
STEP 4
Enter the proxy server information provided by your
network administrator into the Proxy Settings section. Enter the proxy
server number without any http:// prefix. Just enter the numbers
separated by three dots. Enter the port number and user ID/password as
required. This changes the way that SurveyGold communicates with the
surveygold.com web site in order to get web survey responses so that is uses
your network's proxy server.
STEP 4
Click OK. From now on your
SurveyGold software talks to surveygold.com using your network's
proxy server.
If the problem persists,
contact technical support.
Microsoft
Excel™ Issue:
When
converting results to Excel, responses are truncated at 256 characters in
length.
The work-around to this issue is to perform the Convert
Results action in the Analyze Results. Specify that you want to convert the results to Data Interchange
Format (DIF). The resulting DIF file can be opened in any Excel version via its File/Open dialog and selecting DIF as the
file type you want to open.
Microsoft Word™ Issue: When saving a survey or a report in Word format either nothing happens at
all or an error message appears and SurveyGold terminates.
This is caused by a known Windows/Word problem. You
have done nothing wrong to cause this, most assuredly. A little background information is in order.
In
essence, SurveyGold makes a marionette puppet out of Microsoft Word in order to create
a Word survey in SETUP SURVEY or a Word report in
ANALYZE RESULTS. SurveyGold is acting as the puppet master. Word is
the puppet. The Windows operating system provides the strings. Word is opened by SurveyGold invisibly.
Specific commands are sent to Word by SurveyGold to produce the document. When the
document is completely created, SurveyGold instructs Word to make itself visible.
There are two sets of strings available for SurveyGold to send commands to Word. When
an error message appears while SurveyGold is pulling Word's strings, this
indicates that Word is being an
insubordinate puppet. Word is effectively defying SurveyGold's commands. The SurveyGold
program closes when this error occurs. Yet, Word program remains open and
running, invisibly, after this occurs. It is admittedly pretty messy.
So, in order to work around this problem SurveyGold provides a way of
telling Windows which of the two sets of strings it wants to employ.
Obviously, the first set of strings SurveyGold attempts to use causes an
error. Therefore, SurveyGold needs to change the set of strings used to
send commands to Word. Here is how to make that change the set:
STEP 1
Press Ctrl-Alt-Del to display the Windows Task manager. Select the
Processes tab. Click the Image name column once to sort the process names
alphabetically. If you locate Winword.exe anywhere on the list, select it and
press the End Process button. This closes the Word program left open
when SurveyGold erroneously closed.
STEP 2
Launch your edition of SurveyGold and click the Help toolbar button .
STEP 3
When the Help panel appears, click the "Change Your SurveyGold
Preferences" button.
STEP 4
In the SurveyGold Preferences window, set the Word automation method value to
2. Click OK.
Normally, this should resolve the issue. If the problem persists,
you should read the next few paragraphs.
ANTI-VIRUS ISSUES
If none of the preceding information resolves the issue, you should know
that there are several known issues between anti-virus software and Word
automation. The term "automation" refers to the ability of one program
(SurveyGold) to call upon features of another program (Word).
Anti-virus software
is trying to be helpful and
added some extra scanning (in addition to the real-time scanning it does to
try to catch viruses) that
causes automation to Word 2000 to fail. If you have anti-virus
software, read
the following Microsoft technical support articles:
(Explains how to disable Norton Anti-Virus plug-in
for Office.)
CORRUPTED WINDOWS REGISTRY ISSUES
If none of the preceding information resolves the issue, some
customers have reported that repairing their Windows Registry (a giant,
behind-the-scenes database of software preferences used by the Windows
operating system) appears to resolve the issue.
In the words of one
customer:
"I finally ran a program that I seldom use, "Registry Repair
2005." It found 108 registry errors and automatically fixed them. After
the fix, SurveyGold created Word versions of the survey with no problem."
"Therefore, I ask that you add this solution to your toolkit. Since
Registry Repair is an old product, I recommend that you suggest that
SurveyGold users go to a web site that rates registry repair software, order
one, install and run it. That may provide the solution."
One such site is "TopTenReviews(TM)" web site at
http://registry-repair-software-review.toptenreviews.com
WORD ISSUES
Word is a great product. It does a great job of notifying users when it
needs answers to particular questions, particularly when opening or closing
the program. That is fine when a real person is using the software. But, this
prompting of messages can be a real problem when a program like SurveyGold is
using Word as an automation server.
There is a possibility that your installation of Word is requiring that a
template file named Normal.dot be saved every time that Word closes. This can
cause problems when using Word as an automation server (which is the case when
SurveyGold is employing Word). The following Microsoft technical support
article addresses this issue.
There is a possibility that your installation of Word
is displaying error messages when it starts. The following Microsoft
technical support article addresses this issue.
Finally, there are some other issues that Microsoft has documented that may
lead to a resolution.
(In particular the topics entitled "Checking
the System" and "Reinstalling Microsoft Office".
Microsoft Word™ Issue: When saving a survey or a report in Word format the following
error message appears: The formatting in this document is too
complex. Please full save the document now.
Assuming that you have Word 97 SR-1 or above (which is the
minimum version of Word supported), you might be affected by a known
issue with Word that can be resolved by changing the following
settings:
STEP
1
Click the Help button in SurveyGold tool bar.
STEP 2
Click the Change Your SurveyGold Preferences button.
STEP 3
In the Features tab, change the "Word save frequency" to 50 and
click OK
Try exercising the feature that was causing the
error and this should resolve the issue.
Video
Issue: True Color video setting causes graphs to shift from solid colors to
lines.
There is a known issue in the development tool used to
create SurveyGold. Specifically, in some instances if your computer video settings are set
to True Color, the pie, line and bar charts will display with striped or hashed lines
instead of solid colors.
The work-around is to set your computer's video
settings down to 16 million colors or whatever the next lower setting is from your the
True Color video setting.
This video setting can be changed by accessing
Start-->Settings-->Control Panel-->Display. Once the Display Properties dialogue
is opened, click the Settings tab. Choose a value that is lower than TrueColor,
such as
16 bit High Color. That will cause the pie, line and bar charts to display as solid colors
again.
Windows™
Security Issue:
When
launching SurveyGold this message appears: "SQLSTATE
= IM002 [Microsoft][ODBC Driver Manager] Data
source name not found and no default
driver specified."
ROOT CAUSE #1
This issue can occur when Windows security settings
on your computer are preventing SurveyGold software from accessing
its own database.
ROOT CAUSE #2
This issue can also occur because the Windows firewall software is
blocking communication between SurveyGold and its database. If you
are prompted by your firewall to block access to Adaptive Server
Anywhere, select the unblock option and this will resolve the issue.
ROOT CAUSE #3
This issue can also occur when the SurveyGold product
has not been
installed properly on Windows
2000, XP or Vista as a result of running the setup program
without sufficient security privileges. Windows 2000, XP and Vista
have
advanced security features that can restrict the installation of
any software product, such as SurveyGold, at the discretion of a
corporate information technology network administrator. In such
cases, when installing the product in a corporate setting
it
is essential that the SurveyGold setup program be "run
as" a user with Windows "administrator"
rights.
This situation often occurs when the person installing
SurveyGold (often a member of the internal Help Desk staff) has
logged on to Windows 2000, XP or Vista as
an
administrator and then run the SurveyGold setup program.
Afterward, when the Help Desk user logs
off
the workstation from the administrator login ID, and the normal
Windows user logs back into the workstation intending to run
SurveyGold (their user login ID typically
does not have administrator rights) the
aforementioned error message appears when SurveyGold is launched.
The root cause of the issue, for those who are
technically interested, is that SurveyGold installs and accesses
application preferences in the Windows Registry using the Current
User hive. So, when a Help Desk staff logs on to an administrator login ID
and runs the SurveyGold setup program, the setup program
faithfully places these preferences in the administrator's
Registry hive, not the intended SurveyGold user's Registry hive.
Hence, when the SurveyGold user logs back into the workstation,
these application preferences are not accessible in their local
user hive. This causes the error message to appear.
HOW TO
REMEDY THIS SITUATION
Do not worry. Even if you do not understand the explanation of
the root cause, you can follow these steps to remedy the
situation.
If you have just installed SurveyGold, the
recommended guidance is to uninstall SurveyGold (via the Windows
Control Panel-->Add/Remove Programs menu) and then follow the
following guidance:
STEP 1
Login to Windows using the user login ID that
you want to run SurveyGold. This will normally be your own user
login ID, not an administrator login ID.
STEP 2
Make sure to
download the most recent SurveyGold software. Download this zip file which contains a setup program and extract
the contents of the zip file to a temporary folder such as
"My Document\SurveyGold Setup".
STEP 3
Navigate to the "My
Documents\SurveyGold Setup" folder and
locate the sg8setup.exe file.
STEP 4
Hold down the Shift key and right-click on the
sg8setup.exe file.
STEP 5
Select "Run As..." from the popup menu.
STEP 6
Enter a Windows user login ID that has administrator
privileges and a
password if required. Then
click OK.
(Note: It is likely that you will have to
consult with your internal Help Desk to acquire this administrator
login ID information.)
This will run the SurveyGold setup program using full
administrator
privileges. This normally
results in a successful installation.
You
should be able to run SurveyGold successfully while logged in to
your Windows login ID upon completion of the setup program.
Windows™ Security Issue: When
launching SurveyGold this message appears: "Connect to SQL
Anywhere: UserID: dba Password: ****"
(If you are using
SurveyGold 8, the message is "Connect to Adaptive Server
Anywhere: UserID: dba Password: ****")
This issue can occur when system settings that were added during the software installation are not yet available to Windows. Simply said, this issue can be resolved in many cases by simply rebooting the Windows operating system.
This issue can also occur because the Windows firewall software is
blocking communication between SurveyGold and its database. If you
are prompted by your firewall to block access to Adaptive Server
Anywhere, select the unblock option and this will resolve the
issue.
However, this
issue most typically
occurs when the SurveyGold setup program has been run without
sufficient Windows security privileges. Your Windows operating
system very likely requires that you have administrator privileges
in order to install SurveyGold, or any other software for that
matter and apparently your Windows login ID does not have those
privileges.
Windows 2000, XP and
Vista have
advanced security features that can restrict the installation of
any software product, such as SurveyGold, at the discretion of a
corporate information technology network administrator. In such
cases, when installing the product in a corporate setting
it
is essential that the SurveyGold setup program be "run
as" a user with Windows "administrator"
rights.
HOW TO
REMEDY THIS SITUATION
Do not worry. Even if you do not understand the explanation of
the root cause, you can follow these steps to remedy the
situation.
IIf you have just installed SurveyGold, the
recommended guidance is to uninstall SurveyGold (via the Windows
Control Panel-->Add/Remove Programs menu) and then follow the
following guidance:
STEP 1
Login to Windows using the login ID that
you want to run SurveyGold. This will normally be your own user
login ID, not an administrator login ID.
STEP 2
Make sure to
download the most recent SurveyGold software. Download this zip file which contains a setup program and extract
the contents of the zip file to a temporary folder such as
"My Document\SurveyGold Setup".
STEP 3
Using Windows Explorer, navigate to the "My
Documents\SurveyGold Setup"
folder and
locate the sg8setup.exe file.
STEP 4
Hold down the Shift key and right-click on the
sg8setup.exe file.
STEP 5
Select "Run As..." from the popup menu.
STEP 6
Enter a Windows login ID that has administrator
privileges and a password if required. Then
click OK.
(Note: It is likely that you will have to
consult with your internal Help Desk to acquire this administrator
login ID information.)
This will run the SurveyGold setup
program using full administrator
privileges. This normally results in a successful
installation.
You should
be able to run SurveyGold successfully while logged in to your
Windows login ID upon completion of the setup program.
Windows™ Security Issue: When running the SurveyGold
setup program an error message is displayed.
This issue can occur because the Windows firewall software is
blocking communication between SurveyGold and its database. If you
are prompted by your firewall to block access to Adaptive Server
Anywhere, select the unblock option and this will resolve the
issue.
However, this
issue most typically
occurs when the SurveyGold setup program has been run without
sufficient Windows security privileges. Your Windows operating
system very likely requires that you have administrator privileges
in order to install SurveyGold, or any other software for that
matter and apparently your Windows login ID does not have those
privileges.
Windows 7, Vista, XP
and 2000 have
advanced security features that can restrict the installation of
any software product, such as SurveyGold, at the discretion of a
corporate information technology network administrator. In such
cases, when installing the product in a corporate setting
it
is essential that the SurveyGold setup program be "run
as" a user with Windows "administrator"
rights.
HOW TO
REMEDY THIS SITUATION
Do not worry. Even if you do not understand the explanation of
the root cause, you can follow these steps to remedy the
situation.
If you have just installed SurveyGold, the
recommended guidance is to uninstall SurveyGold (via the Windows
Control Panel-->Add/Remove Programs menu) and then follow the
following guidance:
STEP 1
Login to Windows Windows using the login ID that
you want to run SurveyGold. This will normally be your own user
login ID, not an administrator login ID.
STEP 2
Make sure to
download the most recent SurveyGold software. Download this zip file which contains a setup program and extract
the contents of the zip file to a temporary folder such as
"My Document\SurveyGold Setup".
STEP 3
Using Windows Explorer, navigate to the "My
Documents\SurveyGold Setup"
folder and
locate the sg8setup.exe file.
STEP 4
Hold down the Shift key and right-click on the
sg8setup.exe file.
STEP 5
Select "Run As..." from the popup menu.
STEP 6
Enter a Windows login ID that has administrator
privileges and a password if required. Then
click OK.
(Note: It is likely that you will have to
consult with your internal Help Desk to acquire this administrator
login ID information.)
This will run the SurveyGold setup
program using full administrator
privileges. This normally results in a successful
installation.
You should
be able to run SurveyGold successfully while logged in to your
Windows login ID upon completion of the setup program.
Windows™
Security Issue: When clicking the Get Web Responses button this
message appears: "HTTP Error: SurveyGold was unable to create a
special component called a socket object."
This issue
occurs when the SurveyGold setup program has been run without
sufficient Windows security privileges. Your Windows operating
system very likely requires that you have administrator privileges
in order to install SurveyGold, or any other software for that
matter and apparently your Windows login ID does not have those
privileges.
Windows 7,
Vista, XP and 2000 have
advanced security features that can restrict the installation of
any software product, such as SurveyGold, at the discretion of a
corporate information technology network administrator. In such
cases, when installing the product in a corporate setting
it
is essential that the SurveyGold setup program be "run
as" a user with Windows "administrator"
rights.
HOW TO
REMEDY THIS SITUATION
Do not worry. Even if you do not understand the explanation of
the root cause, you can follow these steps to remedy the
situation.
STEP 1
Login to Windows using the login ID that
you want to run SurveyGold. This will normally be your own login ID,
not an administrator login ID.
STEP 2
Make sure you have
downloaded the most recent SurveyGold software
from surveygold.com. This method of installation instructs
you to download a zip file that contains a setup program. Extract
the contents of the zip file to a temporary folder such as
"My
Document\SurveyGold Setup".
STEP 3
Using Windows Explorer, navigate to the "My
Documents\SurveyGold Setup"
folder and
locate the sg8setup.exe file.
STEP 4
Hold down the Shift key and right-click on the
sg8setup.exe file.
STEP 5
Select "Run As..." from the popup menu.
STEP 6
Enter a Windows login ID that has administrator
privileges and a password if required. Then
click OK.
(Note: It is likely that you will have to
consult with your internal Help Desk to acquire this administrator
login ID information.)
This will run the SurveyGold setup
program using full administrator
privileges. This normally results in a successful
installation.
You should
be able to run SurveyGold successfully while logged in to your
Windows login ID upon completion of the setup program.
Performance
Issues:
If you have been using SurveyGold software
for awhile and it seems to be getting sluggish, try this to improve the software's
performance.
DE-FRAGMENT
YOUR DISK DRIVE
Make sure that your computer's disk
drive is de-fragmented. A fragmented hard drive can cause severe
performance problems in not only SurveyGold but in other software
applications as well.
