The recent Blazon issue related to PDF conversion caused issues for many clients across the OpenText ecosystem. We have broken down the incident according to one of our clients, with the impact, the investigation, the various fixes and the process of getting there. Content Management (xECM) clients saw the issue and it has been widely discussed.
Problem
- Compatibility problem in Microsoft Office Automation/OLE Automation introduced by Microsoft’s June 9, 2026, security update.
- PDF conversion stopped working in OpenText Blazon used in their Content Management (xECM) implementation.
- Business workflows stopped working suddenly; Microsoft later documented that applications using OLE Automation to interact with Microsoft Office could fail to launch Office applications or open documents after the June 2026 updates.
- OpenText hotfix did not address the issue.
Solution
- By redirecting Office formats such as Word and Excel to OpenText’s own Otf2dl loader, we were able to restore PDF conversion as a temporary fix to restore workflows.
- Additional logs, heartbeat files, and test documents were collected for further analysis.
- Long term, Microsoft released KB5099538 for Windows Server 2019, which fixed the compatibility issue in OLE Automation that had been introduced by the June security update.
In June 2026, at a large Public Sector organization in Sweden, their document management system was affected by a major issue with PDF conversion in OpenText Blazon. Office documents could no longer be converted to PDF as expected, which had a direct impact on business workflows. Approval and signing workflows that depended on PDF conversion stopped at these stages and could therefore not be completed as normal.
The incident required close collaboration between Turnpikes, the internal organization teams, and the team which handles the underlying infrastructure. Throughout the incident, the parties maintained an ongoing dialogue and worked in parallel to identify the root cause while also looking for a temporary solution that could keep the service operational.
During the initial troubleshooting, several potential causes were investigated. Among other things, server capacity and Microsoft Defender were analyzed, as Defender was consuming significant server resources whenever Blazon attempted to perform conversions. Exclusions and specific EDR configurations were tested, servers were restarted, and additional RAM and CPU capacity was added. However, none of these measures resolved the actual conversion issue.
At the same time, the dialogue with OpenText Support intensified. The issue was eventually linked to a compatibility problem in Microsoft Office Automation/OLE Automation introduced by Microsoft’s June 9, 2026 security update. Since the Blazon servers were running Windows Server 2019, the relevant update was KB5094123. Microsoft later documented that applications using OLE Automation to interact with Microsoft Office could fail to launch Office applications or open documents after the June 2026 updates.
OpenText also identified the same type of issue affecting other customers and provided a specific hotfix for Blazon in the form of an updated BIPrint.dll. The hotfix was installed and tested in our QA environment, but despite being developed specifically for this issue, it did not resolve the problem in our environment. OpenText therefore escalated the case to its development team, and additional logs, heartbeat files, and test documents were collected for further analysis.
In parallel, we actively worked on an alternative workaround. Blazon normally uses Microsoft Office components to render Office documents. By redirecting Office formats such as Word and Excel to OpenText’s own Otf2dl loader, we were able to restore PDF conversion. After further adjustments, approval and signing workflows were also able to run automatically from start to finish.
However, the workaround did not resolve everything. OpenText’s alternative rendering engine introduced visual differences compared with the standard Microsoft-based conversion. In the document templates, for example, text in headers could lose its bold formatting and change in size. Testing also identified issues with rendering the Swedish characters Å, Ä, and Ö in uppercase in certain attributes.
This meant that we had found a way to technically restore the workflows, but not a solution that provided the same document quality and layout that had historically been maintained. The dialogue with OpenText therefore continued while the workaround remained available as an alternative.
The permanent solution ultimately came from Microsoft. On July 14, 2026, Microsoft released KB5099538 for Windows Server 2019, which fixed the compatibility issue in OLE Automation that had been introduced by the June security update. Microsoft specifically says that the update corrected the OLE Automation behavior and restored the expected application functionality.
After confirming that KB5099538 had been installed on the affected servers. New tests of Blazon were then carried out. Functionality was first verified in the test environment and subsequently in production. We tested standard approval workflows, signing workflows, as well as the resumption of workflows that had previously become stuck because of the conversion issue. All tests completed successfully, and Blazon was once again confirmed to be functioning as expected.
The incident could therefore be closed as permanently resolved following the installation of Microsoft update KB5099538.
Above all, the incident demonstrates the value of close collaboration when a complex issue spans several technical areas of responsibility. Throughout the process, Turnpikes, the organization, the infrastructure team, and OpenText worked together on troubleshooting, testing, and alternative solutions. Even when the initial measures did not produce the desired result, the work continued in a structured way until the underlying issue could be permanently resolved.
It was a situation with significant operational impact, but also a strong example of how active troubleshooting, clear communication, and collaboration between multiple parties made it possible to manage the situation while it was ongoing and ultimately restore full functionality.
