Nasty Flare WebHelp bug

It always happens just when you're trying to get something finished off to meet a deadline. You've been compiling your project all day without any problems and then, out of the blue, you get an error message when you hit the build button - and the nightmare begins!

OK, nightmare might be pushing it a bit in this instance, but severe headache is certainly no exageration.

In this case I'm talking about building WebHelp in Flare 2.5.2. The message that appeared out of the blue was:

The error message might lead you to believe that the problem is one of the files you've been working on. Don't be fooled. I tried taking a backup of my entire project directory and then reverting to a previous version from our Subversion repository, saved prior to the error occurring. It didn't solve the problem.

Neither is it something obvious like a temporary file sitting around somewhere. I tried cleaning out Flare's temporary directories. No good.

Don't bother reinstalling Flare. I tried it. This is a stone cold bug and you need to get the fix from MadCap.

Solution

If you are using Flare 2.5.2 and you get the following error message when you build your output:

"Internal error: Cannot create a file when the file already exists."

You need to download a patched DLL:

http://madcap.vo.llnwd.net/o1/flare020-ke5g/B3.CoreKit.zip

and do this:

1. Unzip this file.
   This produces a file called B3.CoreKit.dll.
2. Exit Flare, if it's running.
3. In Windows Explorer, go to C:\Program Files\MadCap Software\MadCap Flare V2.5\Flare.app (assuming that's where you chose to install Flare).
4. Rename the existing B3.CoreKit.dll file in this directory as B3.CoreKit.ORIGINAL.
5. Copy the new B3.CoreKit.dll file to the C:\Program Files\MadCap Software\MadCap Flare V2.5\Flare.app directory.
6. Restart Flare.