Of course documentation shouldn't be like this!

Publishing this several months after I wrote it - the issues were eventually addressed and I managed to unblock myself.

Most (all?) of my "projects" are currently in limbo because of a limiting factor in integrating with a third party.

Yes, I'm deliberately vague as I don't want to name and shame until I resolve things. (feel free to guess in the comments though.)

I was trying to use an expensive, paid-for, advertised feature but it wasn't working, the vague error messages didn't point to a solution, and the documentation was vague, outdated and incomplete such that I wasn't sure about the meaning of some things and couldn't follow others. 

Rather than complain or bemoan their seeming incompetence, I thought it would be better to use this as an opportunity to make a checklist I can use:

• Keep documentation up to date.
• Remove documentation for features that are retired/deprecated/removed. (Or, keep the docs and indicate the new status appropriately.)
• Ensure all error messages are easily copyable/searchable. (Needs to work with the clipboard)
• Have working examples of everything that's possible. (I had support people say that "If our documentation says it's possible then it must be. But we don't know how.")
• Ensure that changes in dependant software or tools from 3rd parties are tracked and documentation is kept up to date to reflect this. (You don't want documentation that says "use [3rd party tool] for X" when they dropped that functionality years ago!)