Run-time Error '5': Invalid procedure call or arg

[bobr]

Am making my first try at using your nifty macro.

Got the following error message when the "Publishing" progress bar reached 100%...

Run-time error '5':

Invalid procedure call or argument.

I'm using Word 2002 on WinXP (SP2).

Thanks.

[bobr]

I did some more digging into your info, and found that with the pml file I was homefree. I used dropbook, and sure enough I ended up with a doc file! Excellent. Would love to have the whole process work smoothly though.

I had dropbook in same dir as your macro word doc. Is that right?
Also noticed that it showed up in eReader with a funny title, something like /v... something instead of the title I thought I typed in when prompted.

And I also noticed that I have some short lines like it was taking every <CR> "too literally". Is there a way to deal with that, or should I go take a closer look at the source file and make sure it "flows" right?

Thanks for the interesting utility! It's definitely worth a better look and to try some more conversions with it.

[bobr]

Ok, we can close this one with the following answers (unless I'm wrong by coincidence, that is!)

The argument problem and the line size problems went away when I:
1) Used a title that had no "-" characters in it.
2) Used MS Word to change every single paragraph mark to a space.

I did #2 by:
1) Replace all ^p^p with <p> (or if that occurs in the document, use something unique instead)
2) Replace all ^p with a space
3) Replace all <p> with ^p^p
4) Save as a .txt file with Windows default char set and don't choose CR/LR option for each line.

You can test the results by opening in notepad and shrinking the width of the window. It should flow properly if the CR at the end of each line is gone.

When I converted the document (from the plain .txt file, but probably same works with a MSWord doc also if you need formatting), it flowed on the Palm screen in eReader just fine also.

And it went all the way through to the installer.

Very nice! I think I'm going to enjoy this little tool!

[Peter Gorod]

Ok, Bob, you solved your problem by yourself...

It's true that the paragraph problems should be solved by handling the original document with Find/Replace like you did (the save as .txt step shouldn't be necessary), because Publish eBook must respect paragraph marks if they are there in the text... if they are misplaced, they should be removed before converting to eBook.

I am interested in solving the other problem about the error and the '-' in the title. Can you please elaborate a bit further:

When you say title, what do you mean? The document title as defined in File-->Properties-->Title, or the first line of text inside the document? (I tried titles with '-' characters, but I don't get the error!)

In short, if you could provide me with a "recipe" to construct a simple document that produces the error, I would be able to trace the problem and correct it.

Thank you

Peter Gorod

[bobr]

I was converting from a txt document and if I remember I got prompted for a title. But the same error had come up after I saved it as a Word document also. And the title in the resulting eReader document didn't seem to match anything I had entered... maybe that one came from MS Word, and had a funny title to begin with. Does it grab the first line of the text or something?

At any rate, obviously I didn't really record enough to give you better details because I was just fiddling until it worked. If I can reproduce the problem, I'll definitely pass it on to you.

BTW, I wrote something up on this at www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4443

Thanks Peter!

[Peter Gorod]

The title that Publish eBook uses is grabbed from File-->Properties-->Title (the Author field also gets included in the eBook).

If this is not defined (as happens when you're loading from a .txt), Publish eBook prompts you to insert a title, as this is necessary to generate an eBook (it becomes the name of the eBook).

If you save the .txt as a Word Document after opening it, Word does use the first line of text as the document's title.

As I said, I tried using hyphens for a title and conversion went just fine... I'd really appreciate it if you could help me track this error - it would be one less bug in the program.

Most people, if they got this error, would never take the trouble to post here and look for solutions, they'd just think the program is crap and never use it again...

[bobr]

Okay, give me a little time and I'll see what I can figure out as far as reproducing the error. The problem is that I deleted the original source file, but I'll post back here with details if I figure out how to get that error again...

Yea, I know what you mean... people expect things to work perfectly 100% of the time in every possible solution, or they decide the whole thing is worthless. They don't realize how one little unusual situation can wreck a program. I'm not a programmer, but I've coded enough to know it's a lot of work. Too bad users don't have to try to code a little bit before they're allowed to complain!

I have to admit that I'm that way with a lot of software also, though, in the sense that I don't even load anything on my Treo that was at all related to a crash more than once. I do make exceptions for software that is really important to me and that others have had luck with, and I try not to assume the program was necessarily at fault because it could always be a conflict with something else, or a bug from PalmOne, or even user error!

But I'm really glad I got your program working because it's a really convenient utility for me.

[bobr]

Sorry Peter... so far no luck recreating the errors. If I run into it by accident again, I'll give you all the details I can collect.

Thanks again for a great utility!

[Peter Gorod]

Thanks. Even if I can't correct the error, at least I'm glad it's working for you now.

Since you're using it and you are the kind of guy that posts in forums :-), in case you have any suggestions let me know...

Peter

[bobr]

I do have one suggestion. Just a thought. The macro itself is really slick. So my idea is simple really.

I think it would take lot of the mystery out of it if you would put an explanation of what it does step by step, starting with when you launch the doc, thru the pml file and what gets in it, and how you could run dropbook on the pml, etc etc. Then if anything does go wrong people are likely to still be able to get their pdb file. And if it works as hoped, they still feel better about what it's doing. I think all the info is pretty much available, but if it was obvious from the front page, it would make it more likely for the casual visitor to actually try it out. Like I said, just a thought. But what seems obvious to you is far from obvious to anyone looking at this for the first time.

Another thought is to more clearly indicate what sort of input and output types it handles. That might have been there also, but I don't think it was self-evident to me on first glance. But maybe I was just blind also!

Take care!

[Peter Gorod]

Thanks Bob,

I'm going on vacation for a week now, but I'll try to look into your suggestions when I get back. I might put together a FAQ or something.

I guess I was trying to hide Dropbook from everyone, since the macro is supposed to eliminate the need to even know PML exists. But I realise from your post that probably most of my audience are former PML and Dropbook junkies and they deserve an explanation.

About the input types, it's really a thrill because my input types are basically all types that Word can handle! And that's quite a lot of them. :-)

Peter

EDIT: You might also like to take a look at a thread called "Scheduled tasks" on this forum, it contains some ideas for the future of Publish eBook.

[denice]

hi peter, i've got that runtime error. i'm using word 2003, the document has 96 pages i can't find any paragraph htmls that bob has with the same error message. please help. can i send you the file and you can try? i've done it twice and still manage to recreate the error.

[Peter Gorod]

Sure, send me the file by connecting these three parts to make up an email address:

publishebook

netcabo
pt

I'm sure you can figure it out (and all the robots crawling the web for email addresses can't).