Product Bulletin for Amicus Attorney 2009 Small Firm Edition

Release 9.0.0

January 2010

In this list, outstanding known issues in the current build of Amicus Attorney 2009 Small Firm Edition are grouped together by topic. Within each section, issues are sorted by number, highest to lowest.

Table of Contents

Installation

19591—After upgrading from Version 2008 to 2009, an uninstall of Version 2008 from those computers will fail, showing the message “Could not read path data from your Amicus INI file”.
SOLUTION: Please contact Technical Support for assistance.

18921a—Installing Amicus Attorney Small Firm Edition on a computer where Amicus Attorney Premium Edition Server is installed might remove Amicus Attorney Premium Tools from the Windows Start menu.
WORKAROUND: Recreate this shortcut in the Windows Start menu.

18921b/20156—Uninstalling Amicus Attorney Small Firm Edition from a computer where other Amicus products are installed might remove the folders and shortcuts for those products from the Windows Start menu.
WORKAROUND: Recreate these folders and shortcuts in the Windows Start menu.

4276—If one Team Member is installed and added at the same time as another, both Team Members might be assigned the same User ID.
WORKAROUND: Uninstall and reinstall one of the Team Members.

Dailies

20291 (patch available)—After upgrading to Version 2009 from a Version in which you had more than 17 Dailies Page items defined (including “Today’s Practice Reminders”, “Today’s Overview”, and separators), Amicus might terminate unexpectedly when you open the Dailies module. (This may be the result of new Dashboards auto-assigned to you during the upgrade.)
SOLUTION: A patch that resolves this issue is available from the Support > Updates and Downloads section of our website. A maximum of 20 items can be listed in Dailies. We recommend that you go to File > Preferences > Dailies > Dailies Pages and remove any extra items that you do not need.

Files

N101—In rare cases, you might encounter Files that are not assigned to any Team Members. These orphaned or “ghost” Files cannot be opened for viewing or editing through the Files module.
WORKAROUND: Using the Create Archive function will allow you to access these Files. In Amicus Administrator, choose Database > Management > Archive and, in the window that appears, simply click Cancel. This will automatically assign them to the Team Member who is “User 1”. (To quickly determine who that is, open Amicus Administrator, choose Users > User Management > Transfer License, and examine the Licensed Users list.) You can then proceed to assign them to the proper Team Members, or if appropriate, they can be archived or deleted.

 Calendar 

4678—An Appointment with a Reminder cannot be changed to a daily-recurring Red Letter Day—a message appears, stating that a Reminder cannot be scheduled on or before the date of the previous instance of the Event.
WORKAROUND: Set the Appointment to “no reminder” before changing it to a daily-recurring Red Letter Day.

p1057—A validation error and "invalid page fault" is generated in the AACNTX.DLL and MFC42.DLL files when in another Team Member's Office after clicking on the Information button for an associated Contact from an Event Details dialog. This appears to happen when the associated Contact to the Event is NOT attached to the File that is also associated with the Event, and the associated Contact is NOT on the Team Member's Contact list.
WORKAROUND: It is recommended that where Contacts and Files are associated with a single Event that they also be associated with each other in order to maintain data integrity.

Communications

20463 (patch available)—Phone Messages in which an Amicus Contact has not been selected in the From field cannot be Forwarded to another Team Member.
SOLUTION: A patch that resolves this issue is available from the Support > Updates and Downloads section of our website.

Time

20290 (patch available)—If you have more than 10 unposted Time Entries on any one day, Amicus might terminate unexpectedly when you display that day in the Time Sheets module.
SOLUTION: A patch that resolves this issue is available from the Support > Updates and Downloads section of our website.

Notes

20284 (patch available)—In Note Details, a large amount of text entered on a line scrolls to the right rather than automatically wrapping to the next line.
SOLUTION: A patch that resolves this issue is available from the Support > Updates and Downloads section of our website.

 E-mail Integration 
 

15937/p1206—After creating an E-mail message from within Amicus Attorney, but deleting it from the Outlook Drafts folder before it is actually sent, it is displayed in the ComCenter Today view as a sent message.
WORKAROUND: Manually delete the E-mail message from your Today folder.

Library

p1237—When opening existing Research Queries or creating new Research Queries from a File Brad (Research > My Saved Queries or All Saved Queries), no Saved Queries are listed in the Saved Query Index in the Control Panel of the Research Query view.
WORKAROUND: You can refresh the view and show your list of Saved Queries by selecting any one of the options from the Show Queries drop-down list.

p1235—This issue occurs if two or more Team Members add content to the same Section, Shelf, or Book (parent location) and at least one Team Member is adding content while offline. For example, Team Member A is offline and adds an item in a parent location. While Team Member A is offline, Team Member B adds an item in the same parent location. When Team Member A goes back online and his or her data is merged with the Team Database, the order of the items that the Team Members have added may appear to sporadically switch positions in the parent location.
WORKAROUND: It is recommended that if Shelves, Books, or Pages are added to Firm Materials while a Librarian is working offline or in her Secondary Office, then when that Librarian goes back online or she unpacks her briefcase in her Primary Office, the Administrator should run a Scan Database. To run a Scan Database: From Amicus Administrator, select Database > Utilities > Scan Database.

Reports

18643—When generating the Contacts > “Contacts Summary - Selected File Party Type" and "Contacts Index - Selected File Party Type” reports, a drop-down list of Party Types is not provided.
WORKAROUND: Manually enter the desired Party Type in the edit box, ensuring that it exactly matches the drop-down value

14697a—Reports cannot be exported to Word 2007 (under Windows XP or Vista).
WORKAROUND: After selecting a Report to run, click Preview, and then click the Export button in the toolbar at the top of the Preview window. Choose Rich Text Format and set the Destination to Disk file. Afterward, you may open the file by choosing Open from the Files menu in Word and then browsing to the file.

14697b—Reports cannot be exported to Excel 2007 (under Windows XP or Vista).
WORKAROUND: After selecting a Report to run, click Preview, and then click the Export button in the toolbar at the top of the Preview window. Choose Excel 8.0 (XLS).

4530—In some circumstances, the Export option that is available when generating a report causes a “missing or out-of-date export DLL” error message.
WORKAROUND: Preview the report and then export it from the preview screen.

Document Assembly

4625—When Previewing a HotDocs 6 WordPerfect sample Master Document, some hidden text will be revealed (e.g. 1FullName). This text does not affect the assembled document output.
WORKAROUND: If desired, edit each of these Master Documents to remove the hidden text.

4443—Document assembly using HotDocs with WordPerfect does not work if WordPerfect is installed or updated after Amicus Attorney is installed.
WORKAROUND: Reinstall Amicus Attorney at the workstation..

Secondary Office

p1285—When you open your Primary Office, the Daily Checks run before unpacking your Briefcase. This only creates a problem if you are unpacking your Briefcase in your Primary Office on a date subsequent to the date when you originally packed the Briefcase to transport your data to your Secondary Office. As part of the Daily Check process, any To Do's that are not marked as "Done" are moved forward to whatever day is the present day (e.g., your Monday To Do's will be moved to Tuesday if you have not marked them as "Done"). When you unpack your Briefcase in the Primary Office, the To Do you marked as "Done" in your Secondary Office remains on the original day (e.g., Monday) whereas that same To Do which was not marked as "Done" in the Primary Office has been moved forward by the Daily Checks to the present day (e.g., to Tuesday). When the data is merged, these To Do's are not recognized as being the same To Do, they are not merged, and this results in the appearance of the "duplicate" To Do.
WORKAROUND: You will need to manually delete the To Do that is not recurring and is not marked "Done".

Miscellaneous

21450—In rare circumstances, Amicus might stop responding if an Event Reminder arrives during the Workstation login process.
SOLUTION: Press ALT+TAB to move focus to the Reminder window and press ENTER to close it.

20436 (patch available)—If Auto-Text is enabled, text entry might cause unexpected problems. For example, Auto-Text words might not be automatically replaced, or typing an Auto-Text or misspelled word might cause the cursor to return to the beginning of the text field.
SOLUTION: A patch that resolves this issue is available from the Support > Updates and Downloads section of our website.

20284 (patch available)—Right-click shortcut menu commands Cut, Copy, Delete, and Select All might not function in text fields.
SOLUTION: A patch that resolves this issue is available from the Support > Updates and Downloads section of our website.

16456—If you set Amicus Attorney to automatically log in to another user’s Office, and set your default view at startup to be the Dailies module, then the Amicus login will fail the following day and onward.
WORKAROUND: To avoid this problem, set your default module to something other than Dailies. If your login is already failing, call Technical Support for assistance.

15953/v0994—Recurrent locking problems might occur in Windows 2000 or XP.
WORKAROUND: Disable Oplock in Windows 2000 and XP. For details, see the Microsoft Knowledge Base available at http://support.microsoft.com/.

0215/p1122—If you are a Windows 2000 or XP user, you might experience the following: When pressing the TAB key or ALT key within the Event, Time Entry, or Phone Call details dialogs, the fields inside the dialog disappear and only the background color of the dialog is shown.
WORKAROUND: Perform the following procedure in your Windows Display settings:
If you are a Windows XP user:
1. From your Control Panel, open Display.
2. Click the Appearance tab.
3. Click the Effects button.
4. Disable the option, "Hide underlined letters for keyboard navigation until I press the Alt key".
5. Click OK in the Display dialog.
If you are a Windows 2000 user:
1. From your Control Panel, open Display.
2. Click the Effects tab.
3. Disable the option, "Hide keyboard navigation indicators until I use the Alt key".
4. Click OK in the Display dialog.

Outlook Contacts & Calendar Synchronization

20297—If you change a single occurrence of a Repeating Appointment in Amicus (as opposed to the series), synchronization might create duplicate Appointments in Outlook (the original occurrence and the changed occurrence).

20295—Changing a single occurrence of a Repeating Appointment in Outlook (as opposed to the series), synchronization does not always update that occurrence in Amicus.

20253 (patch available)—If Outlook Link synchronization is set to occur “On command”, synchronizing a new Contact or Task created in Outlook might cause a duplicate in Outlook.
SOLUTION: A patch that resolves this issue is available from the Support > Updates and Downloads section of our website.

20252 (patch available)—If Outlook Link synchronization is set to occur “On command”, and another user adds or edits an Event in your Outlook shared calendar, that change might not exchange to Amicus.
SOLUTION: A patch that resolves this issue is available from the Support > Updates and Downloads section of our website.

4497/4507—If Amicus Attorney has Outlook Synchronization enabled and set to “Real-time”, and you close and restart Outlook 2002 while Amicus is running, then items are no longer synchronized and error messages might appear.
WORKAROUND: If you close and restart Outlook while Amicus Attorney is running, exit and restart Amicus Attorney to restart the synchronization process.

 Palm Link  

20374—The Amicus Contacts conduit might not be available for setup in the Palm HotSync Manager.
SOLUTION: Please contact Technical Support for assistance.

PaperPort Link

22138 (patch available)—The Amicus icon is not available in the PaperPort screen.
SOLUTION: Please call Technical Support for a patch that resolves this issue.

Accounting Systems

Accounting

19002—Firm-created Billing Rates that begin with the text “Normal” do not work properly after the database has been reindexed and regenerated. “Normal” is an Amicus system value used for various functions. It is not recommended that Billing Rates be created that include that label.

15878—The Accounting Integration Consistency Checker utility fails if Amicus Attorney is not installed at the computer running Amicus Administrator. The failure error states that the Paths section in AmicusAttSFE.ini could not be found. (If integrating with Amicus Accounting, this utility is run automatically as a pre-initialization check process.)

Amicus Accounting

(This section lists Integration issues only. It does not include issues within Amicus Accounting.

16239—If Amicus Attorney is not already running while you add or edit a Client Matter in Amicus Accounting, it might not be exchanged to Amicus Attorney.
WORKAROUND: Make a subsequent change to the Client Matter in Amicus Accounting while Amicus Attorney is running at your workstation.

15281—At a Workstation where the Windows Long Date Format has been customized to omit the space before the year, or between the month and day, Time Entries cannot be posted to Amicus Accounting and exchanges with Amicus Accounting will fail.
WORKAROUND: Change the Windows Long Date Format to include a space before the year, and between the month and day.

15222—In the Integration wizard, a “missing AmicusAttSFE.ini” error occurs during pre-Initialization checks if Amicus Workstation is not installed on the Amicus Server.
WORKAROUND: Install Amicus Workstation on the Amicus Server.

13602a—If a new Amicus Accounting Client Matter has the Default Rate option selected but no Rate entered, the new File created in Amicus Attorney will have a blank Billing Rate and a Rate Value set to the Timekeeper’s Normal Rate Value.
WORKAROUND: In Amicus Administrator, go to Configure > Time Sheets > Billing Rates and delete all Separators from the list.

13602b—If the Amicus Attorney Team Administrator has not prefixed the Attorney Rate Label “Contingency” with a digit , then when a new Amicus Accounting Client Matter is assigned the “C” Billing Rate, the new File created in Amicus Attorney will have the Contingency Billing Rate assigned.
WORKAROUND: In Amicus Administrator, go to Configure > Time Sheets > Billing Rates and prefix the Attorney Rate Label “Contingency” with a “Z” (e.g., “Z-Contingency”).

13481—If you add or edit a Client Matter in Amicus Accounting when Amicus Attorney is not running, Amicus Attorney is automatically launched but that first Client Matter is not exchanged.
WORKAROUND: In Amicus Accounting, save the Client Matter again.

QuickBooks

v1193—During an Exchange with QuickBooks, the following error message might occur: "There was an error when converting the date value '2002-01-22' (or some such date) in the field [FromModifiedDate]".
WORKAROUND: Close Amicus Administrator and then delete the line "SynchroDate=2002-01-22" (the same date as above) from the [QBPROLINK] section of the AADMIN50.INI file.

v1108—When you create a 'New File for an existing Client', the Client field in the New File dialog defaults to the existing Client. If the Client is an Individual, the Full Client Name in the new File may be formatted differently than in the existing File -- e.g. "John Smith" instead of "Smith, John", which will cause an error message upon exchange. Note that if you select a different Client in the New File dialog before clicking OK to save the new File, the same problem occurs.
WORKAROUND: Create the new job for an existing Client in QuickBooks, instead of in Amicus Attorney.

Tabs3

4598—If the Tabs3 Link is configured to use Client ID only, Amicus Attorney might reject the posting of a Time Entry that has a Client ID but no Matter ID.
WORKAROUND: Exit from Amicus Attorney. In Amicus Administrator, go through the Tabs3 Link configuration dialogs (without making any changes). Log back into Amicus Attorney.

Windows Vista

21450—At an Amicus Attorney Workstation running Vista, generating documents fails if Windows UAC (User Account Control) is off.

18738—If Amicus Administrator is on a computer running Vista, the Scan Database utility might fail to run.
SOLUTION: Before running the Scan Database utility (in Amicus Administrator, from Database > Utilities), turn off Windows User Access Control (from Windows Control Panel > User Accounts) and restart the computer. After running the utility, you may turn UAC back on.

16267—If uninstalling an Amicus Attorney Workstation under Vista, an “Explorer not responding” error might appear and the Programs and Features dialog might close.
WORKAROUND: Simply ignore this error message.

15898—At an Amicus Attorney Workstation running Vista, generating a HotDocs template fails if HotDocs is not running.
WORKAROUND: Ensure that HotDocs is running before generating HotDocs templates from Amicus Attorney.

15886—After installing an Amicus Attorney Workstation under Vista, attempting to generate a document or add a document to Amicus might fail during your very first Amicus session.
WORKAROUND: Exit and restart Amicus Attorney.

15192/15193—After you install an Amicus Attorney Workstation under Vista, Search Documents does not find any documents and, when you are adding a document to Amicus, the browse does not find any documents.
WORKAROUND: In Amicus Attorney, go to File > Setup > Document > Shared Documents and specify the appropriate drive mapping.

15188/15189—After installing an Amicus Attorney Workstation under Vista, attempting to create or edit a Master Document might cause the application to terminate unexpectedly.
WORKAROUND: Edit AmicusAttSFE.INI in each of the following two folders: C:\WINDOWS and C:\User\<username of user currently logged in to Windows>\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Windows. In the AmicusAttSFE.INI files, change the ServerAmicusPath item value to equal the drive mapping path to the Team folder on the Server (typically the \AMICUS ATTORNEY 2009 SMALL FIRM TEAM folder).

15182—At an Amicus Attorney Workstation running Vista with Amicus Accounting Integration, attempting to use Account Inquiry from File Details causes an error.

14764—If you are not a Windows Administrator, the prompt to update your copy of Amicus Attorney might appear whenever you attempt to log in to Amicus under Vista, and you will not be able to run Amicus.
WORKAROUND: Disable the automatic check for updates. To do this, right-click on the Amicus Attorney icon on the Desktop, choose Properties, click the Target tab, and change the program name from aaSFEchk.EXE to AmicusAttSFE.EXE. Whenever Amicus Administrator is updated, the Team Administrator will need to ensure that all workstations get updated accordingly.

14697b—Reports cannot be exported to Excel 2007 (under Windows XP or Vista).
WORKAROUND: After selecting a Report to run, click Preview, and then click the Export button in the toolbar at the top of the Preview window. Choose Excel 8.0 (XLS).

14697a—Reports cannot be exported to Word 2007 (under Windows XP or Vista).
WORKAROUND: After selecting a Report to run, click Preview, and then click the Export button in the toolbar at the top of the Preview window. Choose Rich Text Format and set the Destination to Disk file. Afterward, you may open the file by choosing Open from the Files menu in Word and then browsing to the file.

14434—On a computer running Vista, if Amicus Administrator or Amicus Attorney is installed, uninstalled, and then reinstalled to a different location or for a different user, that Amicus application will not open more than once.
SOLUTION: Copy the file AmicusAttSFE.INI from C:\Windows to C:\Users\<name of user logged in>\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Windows, replacing the previous copy of the file there.

 

For further information, contact:

Gavel & Gown Software Inc.
Phone: 800-472-2289/416-977-6633
Fax: 416-977-2563
www.amicusattorney.com
info@amicusattorney.com

Copyright © 2009 Gavel & Gown Software Inc. All rights reserved.
AMICUS and AMICUS ATTORNEY are registered trademarks, and AMICUS ACCOUNTING,AMICUS MOBILE, AMICUS MOBILE SERVER, and DO are trademarks of Gavel & Gown Software Inc.
All other trademarks referenced are the property of their respective owner. Gavel & Gown Software Inc. disclaims any proprietary interest in trademarks other than its own.