SAP Knowledge Base Article - Public

1314374 - Why is my report format different when viewing, printing or exporting in Crystal Reports Desinger and Crystal Reports in a VS .NET web application?

Symptom

  • Differences such as incorrect word wrapping, incorrect space character placement, incorrect underlines, incorrect print characters and other printer, viewer and export issues may be seen when comparing Crystal Reports Desinger to Crystal Reports in a VS .NET applications

Cause

  • Printing, viewing and export format issues in web applications may be due to the Crystal Reports Print Engine printing on a background thread
  • When PrintToPrinter() method is called in a web appication, the background thread is running in a different user context, e.g. ASPNET, and not whatever user context is impersonated on in the web request thread.  In a different user context, there may be no printer setup, or a different printer driver is set up, leading to report format differences
  • Winform viewer and Crystal Reports Desinger print on the main UI thread
  • In a Windows application, there should be no difference in user context, since both threads would be running in the process' user context

Resolution

  • Ensure that the correct printer driver is used by the application

Keywords

KBA , BI-DEV-NET , BI Software Development Kits (SDKs) - .NET or Other , How To

Product

Crystal Reports 2008 V1