You receive an error message when you try to open a past-due activity in Microsoft CRM 1.2 (842167)

SYMPTOMS

When you try to open a past-due activity in Microsoft CRM 1.2, you receive one of the following error messages.

Error message 1

Input string was not in a correct format.

Error message 2

Error
An error has occurred. For more information, contact your system administrator.

CAUSE

This problem occurs if the activity party has been deleted from Microsoft CRM. For example, the activity party could be the Call Initiator or the Call Recipient for a Phone Call activity.

Note In this situation, the activity party may be a user, a contact, a lead, or an account. An activity may be any one of the following activities:

Task
Fax
Phone Call
Letter
Appointment

For example, you experience this problem if all the following conditions are true:

You have a contact that is named Contact 1.
You schedule a Phone Call activity where Contact 1 is the Call Recipient.
This particular Phone Call activity becomes past due.
You delete Contact 1 from Microsoft CRM.

In this situation, the record in the ActivityPartyBase table has a NULL deletion state code. Microsoft CRM expects a value for the deletion state code.

RESOLUTION

Microsoft CRM has a fix for this problem that is part of a cumulative update. The cumulative update information is described in the following Microsoft Knowledge Base article:

904435 Update Rollup 2 is available for Microsoft CRM 1.2

MORE INFORMATION

For more information about the terminology that is used to describe Microsoft product updates, see the following articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

824684 Description of the standard terminology that is used to describe Microsoft software updates

887283 Microsoft Business Solutions CRM software hotfix and update package naming standards