Error when generating HTML report for Spatial Correlation in ArcToolbox

[JamiDennis]

I'm running the Spatial Correlation (Morans I) in ArcToolbox and getting errors regarding the HTML report generation. If I uncheck the "generate report" option, no errors, of course, but then I dont get a nice HTML report.  Below is a screenshot of the error - I'm no python expert but it appears the tool has some error in the python code that generates the HTML report. I just upgraded to 10.6 (10.6.0.8321) which also installed an upgraded python version 2.7.14.  

Is it correct to assume this is a bug in the current ArcGIS desktop version I have installed?

[DanPatterson_Retired]

seems to be a utf-8 error, could you show your inputs into the tool? perhaps there is something is the file or path names

[JamiDennis]

sure.. here you go.  I doubled checked my spatial weights creation and realized I had been using fixed distance but wanted inverse distance instead. So I regenerated that file, then ran the spatial auto-correlation again and it generated the report. Not sure why that would make a difference with a report generating, though.  

here's the original input when I got the error.  

[DanPatterson_Retired]

Not sure, but there can be random errors associated with paths that have punctuation ie ! characters in them.  

Whenever you get such errors, always try a simple location for the inputs and the outputs ie c:/GIS/work

[JamiDennis]

good thought. But I just tried it again, putting it into a path without any punctuation and it failed again. however, I had background processing off. once I turned that on, the report generated. So that could have ben the problem all along. not sure if I had it on or off the first times I was working this.