SAP Knowledge Base Article - Public

1544590 - Unable to search or copy some Thai words in PDF document generated by Crystal Reports

Symptom

  • Unable to search or copy Thai words (letters that look like having superscripts) in PDF
  • When searching Thai words in a PDF document generated by Crystal Reports, it returns no result.

Environment

  • SAP Crystal Reports 2016
  • SAP Crystal Reports 2020
  • SAP Crystal Reports 2025

Reproducing the Issue

  1. In Crystal Reports, create a report containing Thai text that appear to have a superscript.
  2. Export the report to PDF format.
  3. Search for a Thai word that appear to have superscript type of letters in exported PDF document.
  4. Search returns: 'No result found'

Cause

  • Crystal Report's PDF exporting has a feature that is called embedding fonts which embeds font into PDF that makes sure PDF could render these fonts in any platform correctly.
  • The character shown in the PDF has been re-encoded which is applied to the character whose unicode is beyond 0xff
  • For example, the character "我" could be as "0x0020" in PDF which is related to an embedded font in PDF. So if you copy the character in PDF, it will search the character using encoding "0x20". While you copy the "我" from outside and search or type, it will search according its unicode "0x2dfs" (just an example). Hence, this is a behavior by design.
  • This functionality does not currently exist in the product.

Resolution

  • To workaround this limitation, print the report to PDF format from Crystal Reports instead of exporting the report to PDF format.

Keywords

CR,  , KBA , BI-RA-CR , Crystal Reports designer or Business View Manager , Product Enhancement

Product

SAP Crystal Reports 2016 ; SAP Crystal Reports 2020 ; SAP Crystal Reports 2025