Hi, I'm fairly new to Crystal, I'm the tech writer, and have been given the task of upgrading the look and feel of our reports.
Our reports are part of our SaaS and thus the Crystal Server resides on our web application server to render reports.
In my source Crystal Reports I have:
- Set all page margins to 0.25"
- Used guides and aligned everything to them
- The end of one column is the start of the next (uses the same guide)
- Made all column header fields and data fields the exact same width
- Used 'Can Grow' on all string fields
I feel my report source is laid out quite well. Here are my issues:
PDF output:
The whole report is 'scaled down'. All fonts are smaller than they should be. On quick research this seems to be a known issue with Crystal with a registry fix mentioned. Why? Where should the registry fix be applied? To Crystal server? I'm a bit confused on that. Is there any other explanations as to why my PDF output has a far smaller font than chosen in the source? Should I be checking the Crystal Server settings? If so, what? I would need to make an Ops request for that.
Excel output:
The report is too large for printing on the intended page size. Crystal passes the proper margins and page size/orientation to Excel and the report looks fine in PDF, so how come it's too large in Excel? By too large, I mean the columns extend beyond the width of the page when previewing in Excel. The only way to get a successful print is to choose the "Print all columns on one page" in Excel, but that screws some other things up. If I've designed the report in Excel on a 8 1/2x 11 page with 0.25" margins and those parameters are passed to Excel properly, how come the report isn't by default set to print on those parameters? I don't want our users to have to tweak column sizes.
It seems to me I have to use 'Can Grow' on string fields to make a one size fits all report output. No problem in PDF. But exporting to Excel produces the strangest output with the largest string field merged over multiple columns. Why wouldn't a large string field with 'Can Grow' attribute be exported as a single cell with Excel's 'Wrap text' feature?
I thank you for your responses.
Steve