"Encountered an improper argument"

[larryseltzer]

I've been using TextPad for ages and this may be the first support-worthy problem I've run into. I installed 9.1.0 just a few days ago.

I was trying to save a simple HTML file and "the "Save" button does nothing. The folder area was empty so I clicked the folder icon and got the messagebox "Encountered an improper argument". I searched this forum and found two mentions of it in 2010 and 2011, neither with a reply.

I think I have saved files since I installed v9, but maybe not. I tend to use Textpad a lot to write text which I then paste into web forms and other online stuff.

[bbadmin]

Googling that error message reveals other applications reporting it, but no conclusive solution. Autodesk suggest trying the following:

• Run Windows updates.
• Clean out the temp folder:
  C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Temp
  Delete everything you are able to, click the skip button if needed.
• Reboot your machine.

If that doesn't work, try using the standard Windows dialog boxes for Open and Save As. The option to do that is on Configure/Preferences/File.

[larryseltzer]

I changed to standard Windows dialog boxes and got this warning, then a similar one from Textpad, and then the file saved. This seems a bit wrong to me, but I can live with it.

2023-03-09_8-02-16.jpg (11.81 KiB) Viewed 2956 times

[larryseltzer]

And thanks for the help.

[AmigoJack]

You can edit your posts - that way you don't have to create multiple in a row. Likewise you can press CTRL+C on each message dialog to get its text content into the clipboard, to then paste it here (then words can also be found by the board/Google).

If you save that document of yours with encoding "UTF-8" and attach it to one of your posts I could tell you which characters/graphemes cannot be saved to Windows' 1252 encoding (which can easily be anything non-Latin, including Emojis). Is there a reason you insist on 1252? Note that the "Save" dialog pre selects "default", so that is what is set in your preferences.