Edits To Dynamics Launch File Won't Save

My blog post today isn't anything earth shattering but something a partner ran into that was unexpected.  Logical - but unexpected nonetheless.

A recent forum post detailed how the user was trying to set forms & reports dictionary paths using the Edit Launch File window.  What they found was that after editing the launch file using this window was that the changes were not being saved.

Really?  I just assumed everyone hand edited the Dynamics.set file like I do.  On the other hand, the window is nice in that it doesn't let you screw things up either.  So thumbs up for using the UI to do this.

For this specific problem- what the user is running into is likely either a generic permissions error and doesn't have permissions to modify files in the GP folder.  Or most likely they are on a Windows 7 machine with Dynamics GP installed into the Program Files folder and therefore running into a UAC (User Account Control) permissions error.

So the issue is somewhat unexpected as this is the only window I can think of offhand that modifies something in the root GP folder (besides the VBA editor does when it saves VBA modifications to the root GP folder) instead of the \Data folder.

This also is exactly the reason that when you run Dynutils the app asks to elevate permissions in case it has to merge any cnk files.

So in this case, the solution was rather easy:

1. Just hand edit the Dynamics.set file
    
2. When launching Dynamics, make to right click on the Dynamics shortcut and choose "Run as Administrator".  This will prompt for elevated permissions and once granted will allow Dynamics to be able to write to the root of the GP folder.

You could, of course, just change user permissions to the folder itself to allow any user to modify files in that directory.  Or turn UAC off entirely.  But both of these defeat the purpose of having UAC in the first place.

Best Regards,

Patrick Roth
Dynamics GP Developer Support