Technical FAQs

Can I move a license from one machine to another?

Currently there is no way to move a license key from one machine to another. Once a license key is tied to a machine, you can remove it from the machine (using the License Manager or manually deleting it from the registry), but that will not credit a license to your account. That said, if you run into an issue where you have licensed a machine by mistake, please contact info@accusoft.com as they will work with you. We understand this is a current limitation of our licensing system and don’t want you to be adversely affected. Also, typically a development license comes with three “keys”, so if you want to license an additional machine you most likely can. Run and log in to the License Manager and you can see the number of license keys remaining.

How do I store and retrieve documents in subdirectories of the configured documents directory in PrizmDoc PAS?

You can retrieve documents from subdirectories when dealing with local files. Simply pass the subfolder in the fileName parameter when creating the viewing session. You can test this by manually placing a document inside a subfolder and making the following POST request:

`http://localhost:3000/ViewingSession`

    {
        "source": {
            "type": "document"
            "fileName": "folder/document.pdf"
        }
    }

I have a PDF of a form that I’m sending to PrizmDoc to have it auto-detect, but PrizmDoc does not find any fields in the document. What would cause this?

Currently only PDF files with embedded AcroForms will be auto-detected. If the PDF document
has an embedded image of a form, PrizmDoc will not find any results from auto-detection.

With a fully-running PrizmDoc environment (version prior to v10.5), I’m noticing times where the system becomes unresponsive. That is, at some point, it no longer processes requests being made to the backend and I have to restart PrizmDoc in order to alleviate it. What could be causing this?

Prior to version 10.5, PrizmDoc used ProxyServer as its image processing system. Our Development Team eventually began seeing that the ProxyServer exhibited architectural problems that lead to a multitude of issues, such as unresponsiveness.

Starting in version 10.5, the Development Team created the Prizm Content Connect Imaging Service (PCCIS), which is far more stable.

To resolve this issue we suggest upgrading to the latest revision of PrizmDoc. Please see the product page for more information found here: https://www.accusoft.com/products/prizmdoc/overview/

Are there any specific applications or folders which should be excluded in order for PrizmDoc to work on a system with antivirus software?

As a suggestion, the first place to start would be your antivirus logs to ensure there are no entries specific to the following services:

• conhost.exe
• node.exe
• policyhost.exe
• PrizmApplicationServices.exe
• wmiprvse.exe

If there are, you can exclude those files or the following folders where PrizmDoc is installed by default. If you modified the folder name for PrizmDoc, ensure to include that name.

• C:\Prizm
• C:\ProgramData\Accusoft

Please consult your antivirus documentation for instructions on how to add exclusions.

If I have a PDF document that only has an embedded image in it (no text objects, etc.), can PrizmDoc Viewer take it and create a searchable PDF file from it?

Yes. PrizmDoc’s Content Conversion Services can take an image-only PDF and create a searchable PDF file from it. This can be done by modifying the input.dest.pdfOptions.ocr options object; see our documentation here.

If you are attempting to make a searchable PDF from an existing PDF document, please note that the source PDF file should be an image-only PDF. PrizmDoc will not create a searchable file from already-existing vector content.

This feature was introduced in PrizmDoc 13.1, please see our Release Notes for more information.

In PrizmDoc, why do I fail to load/convert Excel documents with the error “Exception from HRESULT: 0x800AC472”?

The error message Exception from HRESULT: 0x800AC472 is usually associated with a failure involving an Excel document, found in the MsOfficeConverter.log. Below are some known triggers of it:

If the user is logged in as “SYSTEM”, “LocalSystem”, or any other non-user-account variant, this will cause PrizmDoc to fail when using MSO services. This is expected behavior when working with Microsoft Office documents in PrizmDoc. Please see step 6 of the Windows Installation documentation regarding this:

http://help.accusoft.com/PrizmDoc/latest/HTML/webframe.html#windows-installation.html

“Specify the login account (account name and password) that PrizmDoc Server will run under. If you are using the Microsoft Office (MSO) Conversion add-on, please make sure that the “login account” is a real user account with Administrator rights. Running PrizmDoc under the LocalSystem user or another Microsoft Windows integrated service account is not supported for this option.”

It’s also crucial that the copy of Microsoft Office on the system has been activated. A not-licensed, not-activated, expired, or trial license will all cause Microsoft Office to not work with PrizmDoc.

More information: https://help.accusoft.com/PrizmDoc/latest/HTML/windows-requirements.html

“The installed copy of Microsoft Office must be activated in order for PrizmDoc’s Microsoft Office Conversion Service to work properly. Not licensed, not activated, an expired or trial version of Microsoft Office will not work with PrizmDoc.”

Your default printer must be the Microsoft XPS Document Writer when working with Excel documents in PrizmDoc. Specifying another printer could possibly lead to this exception.

More information: http://help.accusoft.com/PrizmDoc/latest/HTML/natively-render-mso-documents.html

“The Microsoft Office Conversion Service requires the Microsoft XPS Document Writer printer driver to be installed for the best conversion performance and rendering fidelity of MS Excel documents”

Ensure the Print Spooler service is started and the Microsoft XPS Document Writer is the default printer.

There is a known issue with version 13.3 of PrizmDoc where completely blank Excel files are not loadable in the Viewer. They will fail to load and throw the aforementioned HRESULT exception. This has been fixed in PrizmDoc version 13.6.

In short, please set up the PrizmDoc service correctly to run with a real user account, ensure the copy of Microsoft Office has been activated, and make sure the default printer is set to “Microsoft XPS Document Writer”, then restart the service. This should fix this particular issue in most cases.

For more reading on considerations that Microsoft recommends when running their client-side MSO applications on the server, see this article:

Considerations for server-side Automation of Office

In PrizmDoc, why can’t I delete a full page redaction? The menu pops up for a rectangle redaction, so why not for a full page?

First, some terminology for PrizmDoc Viewer menus:

Traditionally, when you right click on a page, application, etc. the menu that pops up is called the “context menu”. However, in PrizmDoc, we refer to that menu as the Immediate Actions Menu, and there is a larger box that appears off to the side that we call the Context Menu. 

This functionality is viewable in the demo linked below. When you create a full page redaction and right-click on it, you get the Immediate Actions Menu. When you create a rectangle redaction and left- or right-click on it, off to the side you’ll see the Context Menu, and can delete it using either that menu or the “delete” key.

https://www.accusoft.com/demos/redaction-demo/

When you make a full page redaction, the only way to delete it is by using the delete button in the Immediate Actions Menu. You cannot click on it and press “delete”, and you cannot delete it via our Context Menu. This is currently a design feature being discussed below at the time of writing:

https://ideas.accusoft.com/ideas/PDEN-I-512

By default, the parameter immediateActionMenuMode is set to off, which disables the menu. If you are having trouble getting this menu to open in your application, you may need to set it to be on when you have a redaction on the page. You can read more about enabling and disabling this feature here.

If I upload an HTML document to PrizmDoc that has image tags in it, will those images be rendered in the Viewer or will only the text be displayed?

What if the image tags are referencing local images?

When loading an HTML file, PrizmDoc will render image tags that are sourced from publicly accessible URLs. The relative links may not render though, as it’s likely that the source will not be found.

In PrizmDoc 13.2, a server-side configuration option called:

security.htmlRendering.blockExternalContent

was introduced to control whether or not externally-referenced HTML content will be blocked.

See the release notes for more information.

With PrizmDoc Viewer, can I have more than a single viewer on the same page?

Yes, just initialize a second viewer on another <div> in the page. You can use the initialization code here more than once within the same page.

How do I change the classifier to read a specific language in SmartZone v2

Please refer to the specific code samples below:

1) If you are using the .NET control you set the Language property. For example:

SmartZone2.Reader.CharacterSet.Language = Language.WesternEuropean;

2) If you are using the ActiveX control you set the CharacterSetLanguage property. For example:

SmartZone1.CharacterSetLanguage = SZ_WesternEuropeanLanguages

Can I assign a name to each end-user using the Editor for the purpose of track changes?

Yes. When creating an instance of the Editor in your web application, you can configure what the end user’s name and initials should be for track changes. Additionally, you have the option to allow the end user to edit their name and initials. PrizmDoc Editor itself has no user account system; that’s the responsibility of your application. However, when you create an editing session, you can easily configure PrizmDoc Editor to use the username and initials which your application requires. Refer to the PrizmDoc Editor API documentation for more information.