Report Viewer
A Professional Crystal Reports Viewer
The Report Viewer is currently built using Crystal Reports 2008 Service Pack Zero. For a list of issues known to Business Objects, the manufacture of Crystal Reports, read the Crystal Reports 2008 SP0 Release Notes [PDF] (document mirror). Below are some issues reported by our users.
The Report Viewer installs the Crystal Reports runtime to run reports. It is reported that if you install another report viewer, from another company, it will install another Crystal Reports runtime package. This may be an older, out-of-date, install, or one that is not compatible with the Report Viewer from ReportViewer.biz. When you then try to run a report with ReportViewer.biz, the report may not load, giving an error message that says, "Report failed to load."
Uninstalling the competing software, and reinstalling the Report Viewer from ReportViewer.biz should solve this issue.
The "Toggle Parameter Panel" does not show parameters. Parameters are still shown when report is refreshed.
The "Toggle Parameter Panel" is a new feature of Crystal Reports 2008. If your report was not created using Crystal Reports 2008, then this feature will not show parameters in the toggle panel. Your reports will still run with our software. Your parameters are still in the report, will show when you refresh, and are available to formulas. If you would like to take advantage of the "Toggle Parameter Panel," then you must build your reports with Crystal Reports 2008.
You try to open or refresh data on a report, and get a message box simular to the following message:
Make sure you computer has access to the data sources required by the report. If the connection is not an ODBC connection, make sure the check box on the front of the Report Viewer that says, "Use Report Settings," is checked and the data source connection has the same name on the computer as it does in the report. If it is an ODBC connection, and it does not have the same exact name as the connection set in the report, then, before you open the report, uncheck the check box that says, "Use Report Settings," and select the connection that should be used from the list of connections.
You will get this message if someone builds a Crystal Report on their computer that accesses the companies sales server and a Excel spreadsheet on the local computer. The report is then given to a sales person to run. The viewer on the sales persons computer won't be able to access the data source in the Excel spread sheet on the managers computer, and it will throw this error.
Another example of a setup that will cause this error is if your data is an XML source on a remote webserver, but your computer doesn't have Internet access.
Another example is if your ODBC data source has a different name on the computer that created the report, from the computer that is running the report. In this case, you will want uncheck the check box that says "Use Report Settings," and select the correct connection for the viewer to use.
After viewing a report with an XML data source on a remote web server, you close the Report Viewer application and get the message "the exception unknown software exception (0xe06d7363) occurred in the application."
This error does not cause any harm or data loss. Business Objects, the creator of Crystal Reports knows about this error, and it is to be fixed.
The problem is, the Crystal Reports viewer form for Windows doesn't have a graceful way to close http or Internet data connections, so Windows closes the connection when the form closes, and throws this message. It is not something that ReportViewer.biz can change. Business Objects knows of this problem, and they say they are working to fix it. You can work around this problem, as no harm is being done to the system, and no connections are being left open. If it is an annoyance, then please contact Business Objects and ask them to quickly fix this problem.
Again, we suggest that you just live with this message for the time being.
You set a report to display in landscape but the report shows in Report Viewer in the portrait layout. Or, you change the size of the report, but the size changes are not reflected.
First, if you are using Crystal Reports 2008 to create your reports, you will have to uncheck the check box that says "dissociate formatting page size and printer paper size" in the page setup dialog, and then resave your report. You can find this dialog after opening your report in Crystal Reports 2008. Go to the file menu, and then select the page setup dialog. This is an issues known and reported by Business Objects. They may fix this in future service packs.
Also, page setups in Crystal Reports are generally tied to printers. If the default printer installed on your computer does not support a specific layout, you may not be able to change the report to that layout using the viewer.
You may need to view the report in the standard layout, and then modify it before you print, using the Windows Print Dialog.
We are currently working on a change to allow users to input custom report sizes. It will be available in the next major release.