I've got a member I'm trying to help.

He's complaining that he no longer can post a REPLY w/o getting the following message "message body is a mandatory field, you must enter a value for it."

He clearly states he is completing the message body field. He knows what he's doing...he already has hundreds of posts on our forums.

He states that once he gets the message he using the back button on his browser, and the reply is gone.

I've asked him for his specs, but just thought I'd post to see if this is a known prob w/ an easy fix....

Laura

I ran into this last June - it occured when trying to post an attachment with my message. This was a NEW post, not a reply.

Of course, once I opened a ticket, I was unable to reproduce the problem...it appears to be an intermitment and elusive error. Jonmark and Michael at Infopop asked me to do a "View Source" if it ever happened again and to look for the word 'servlet' right near the top.

It will look something like this:

!-- servlet tse001Shang OpenTopic 3.0.7 using standard XSL for board_topic

and then send the whole of the source to them for analysis.

But it has happened since, so we let it go until I run into it again. Apparently others had run into this also, so we're not alone if that helps at all

Hello Laura

I have seen this happen a few times when someone pastes the message from Microsoft Word into an IE browser. Does this match up? If so it's a weird IE only bug. It only happens in the full reply window and not in the quick reply.

This is happening again to quite a number of our members. I need to offer them a "fix".

They are not cutting and pasting text into the reply window. They are simply typing a response. It appears to be happening in both the regular and quick reply.

Laura

Hi Laura

Are you able to replicate this in any way ? I have been trying in response to these report with seemingly the same OS and browser -- and never have seen the error. I know if I could replicate it, we could fix it.

I haven't been able to duplicate this either.

A member just wrote me that he is using MSN 9, is NOT pasting text at all and is getting the error message.

Here he explains exactly what is happening, maybe this will provide a clue:


"When I ask to post, it opens in another window. I type in log in, subject and then type message. I can't see the error message unless I print the page, because the error page will not allow me to scroll down. But when I print the page it says: "Error: message body is a mandatory field. You must enter a value for it." Then there is a link to go back, but I can't get to it, because it only shows on the printed page. Due to the inability to scroll on the error page, I can't get to the link. Kind of confused, because I am entering a message body....."

Hi Laura

MSN 9 -- that does help somewhat. And the user is not pasting anything....

We'll have to hunt down an MSN to test with.

A question from Brian. Is there guest posting anywhere in the forums? It appears froma comment your user made that he is logging and possting on the same page. This only happens in a forum where guest posting is enabled.

Some updated info:

all the members that write to me about this problem (receiving error message "Subject line a mandatory field) are all MSN users.

They were once able to post fine. We've narrowed it down to MSN's recent upgrade to their browser.

Laura

Thanks VERY much. Anything to replicate. I'm also assuming that these folks have Word on their computers too?

We're investigating the possiblity that Office running at start-up may affect this issue. One good test may be to ask users to closer down the whole office service. Usually you just have to right clcik on the Office icon in the tool and choose 'exit'.