Who is this article for?

Review owners who want to resolve document preparations failing.

SYSADMIN or Server Administrators can check logs to confirm the error. If Word versions differ between server and user, server access may be needed to verify.

This article explains how to resolve document preparation failures in Ideagen Please Review caused by Microsoft Word security warnings about external links.

Identifying the symptoms

When preparing a document, the preparation process fails and the Prepare Log contains entries similar to the following:

MsWordAdapter.PrepareDocxDocument-Conversion to .html format-Begin
AbstractOfficeOLEConverter-AttemptConversion Begin
AbstractOfficeOLEConverter-AttemptConversion2 Begin
MsWordAdapter.DocxWordMLConversion-Fail
Exception: Pleasetech.Tara.Common.TaraException: MSWordConverter - Document conversion type: MSWord.Prepare failed to complete in 600 seconds.

The preparation process may appear to stall for some time before eventually failing.

Understanding the cause

During document preparation, Ideagen Please Review uses Microsoft Word to convert the source document into HTML format.

In some cases, the Word document contains links to external content such as:

• Images stored outside the document
• Linked files
• Fields that reference external systems or websites

When Word attempts to convert the document, it may display a security warning similar to the one shown below:

Microsoft Office has identified a potential security concern.

This document contains fields that can share data with external files and websites. It is important that this file is from a trustworthy source.

Because Please Review cannot respond to this prompt automatically, Microsoft Word waits indefinitely for a response until the preparation process eventually times out.

Confirming this is the issue

To verify whether external links are causing the failure:

1. Open the source document directly in Microsoft Word.
2. Select File > Save As.
3. Choose Web Page (.htm; .html) as the file type.
4. Attempt to save the document.

If Microsoft Word displays a security notice regarding external files, links, or websites, this is likely the cause of the preparation failure.

Note: If you do not see a message on your local Word instance, you might need someone with server access to log in to the server and run Word as the user that Please Review runs as to see if this produces such a message.

Removing links using Microsoft Word

If available, use Word's built-in link management features.

To remove links using Microsoft Word:

1. Open the document in Microsoft Word.
2. Select File > Info.
3. Choose Edit Links to Files (if available).
4. Remove any unnecessary linked files or objects.
5. Save the document.
6. Test the preparation process again.

Note: Word may only display certain types of links in the Edit Links window. Linked images can remain embedded within the document even after all visible links have been removed.

If the security prompt still appears when saving as HTML, continue with the next section.

Removing external links from the document package automatically

To remove external links using the PowerShell script:

1. Download the Remove-ExternalLinksGUI.zip file.
2. Left-click on this file.
3. Right-click on it in File Explorer to select Properties.
4. If Blocked shows as ticked, untick that and click OK.
5. Right-click on the file to extract the zip file contents to a folder.
6. Go to the extracted contents.
7. Right-click on the Remove-ExternalLinksGUI.ps1 file.
8. Select Run with PowerShell. (If that doesn't work, you may need to open PowerShell ISE, open the script in that, select it all using CTRL+A, and then press the button to run selected lines.)
9. Select the Word .docx file from the file selector.
10. Review the links removed in the window.
11. Click OK when the completion prompt appears.

The script saves a _Cleaned version of the file. Proceed to the 'Verifying the fix' section below.

Note: There is also a command line version of the script attached for this article for those skilled enough to run it that way, instead of using a selector, but the GUI version is more user-friendly.

Removing external links from the document package manually

Important: Before making any changes, create a backup copy of the original document.

Renaming the document

To rename the document:

1. Locate the affected .docx file.
2. Make a copy of the file.
3. Rename the copy from Document.docx to Document.zip.
4. Confirm the file extension change if Windows prompts you.

Opening the archive

To open the archive:

1. Open the ZIP file using Windows Explorer, 7-Zip, WinZip, or similar.
2. Browse to word\_rels\.
3. Locate the file document.xml.rels.

Editing the relationship file

To edit the relationship file:

1. Extract document.xml.rels.
2. Right-click on the file.
3. Select Open with... a plain text editor such as Notepad, Notepad++, or Visual Studio Code.

You may see entries similar to:

<Relationship Id="rId25" Type="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/officeDocument/2006/relationships/image" Target="https://example.com/image.jpg" TargetMode="External"/>

Look for entries containing TargetMode="External". These indicate references to content that exists outside the document.

Removing the external link entries

To remove external link entries:

1. Delete the entire <Relationship> element for any external links that are no longer required.
2. Save the file.

Updating the document

To update the document:

1. Replace the original document.xml.rels within the ZIP file with the edited version.
2. Close the ZIP archive.
3. Rename the file from Document.zip back to Document.docx.

Verifying the fix

To verify the fix:

1. Open the updated document in Microsoft Word.
2. Save the file as Web Page (*.html) again.
3. Confirm that the Microsoft Word security notice no longer appears.
4. Upload or prepare the document again in Please Review.

Understanding important considerations

The copy of the document will not have the links the original document has. Please Review does not support the handling of these links, so this workaround is the only way to use such documents in Please Review. If you need the version of the document with the links, then you would have to transfer the changes made in the round-tripped document to the original document.

If you have any challenges with following these steps, then please raise this with Support.