How is your students list file like?

It looks like this (followed the documentation):
surname:name:id:email
Johansen:Johan:00759811:abc@cba.com
Tews:Stewart:00724460:abc@xyz.com
Johanson:Jake:00713020:abc@xyz.com
Johnson:Jack:00765671:xyz@abc.com
Blaine:Bob:00739262:xyz@zyx.com
Jacobson:Joe:00722002:abc@hnz.com
Dan:Joe:00719556:fdsafdsa@fdsfds.com
Weiss:Felix:00798736:adsad@fdsafd.com
Natsirt:Tristan:00756259:fsdfds@fdsfsad.com
Jackson:Jim:00774406:dfsafd@fdsfd.com

The data is fake since I was simply doing a demonstration.
I tried to "tune" the surname and name fields inside the Preferences->Main, but didn't help either.

You have to replace (%FirstName) and %(LastName) with %(surname) and %(name) in Edit/Preferences/Project/Papers annotation/Header text.

I tried either way, with or without "%" sign. Maybe it has to do with the "Some papers were photocopied" option?
(they were indeed, my assistants didn't heed the barcode thing and thought the papers are the same...)
Funnily, this worked out of the box at least back in 2015-2016 when I was extensively using AMC.

The screenshot you attached is not related to the configuration option I suggested.

I am sorry. Here it is, but still no luck. OpenOffice opens the marks file with "?" in place of names, and "Annotate" command still produces papers without name in them... In fact I think "(",")" are not needed.

Can you send me the whole project directory?

The zipped file is too large (47MB), so attaching only the roster, source. Otherwise, please feel free to suggest other ways of sharing files.

I was able to cut the project down to 2MB by removing the jpegs and pdfs, still the website says "Entity too large". And also there is no option to remove the attachment, so attaching some random XML file from the project directory just to write this post.

please feel free to suggest other ways of sharing files.

You can use some internet service like https://framadrop.org/

https://framadrop.org/r/emjJ5Xnfyo#s7pjQIM9G1C2eW6mJNgW7wbJnVFaaQ+IXMf2ofF5H/M=

please have a look here

Thanks.
With the current development version, after opening your project, I changed (%surname) to %(surname) and (%name) to %(name) in Edit/Preferences/Project/Papers annotation/Header text, then ran Annotate papers, and this went ok…
What is your version?

Mine is "Auto Multiple Choice 1.2.1 (svn:1403)". Installed it from Linux Mint 18's package manager. Too old?

...and in my case the change you suggested is still not working. Probably because of too old a version?

Too old?

I'm afraid yes.

Thank you. For other encountering the same problem: sudo add-apt-repository ppa:alexis.bienvenue/amc-stable