How do you view a report on machines without crystal installed?

[crystalnovice]

I need to know how to view a crystal report that has been created by a user WITH the software on there machine, however, the user that wishes to view the report DOES NOT have the software loaded locally on their machine? Does anyone no of a way to provide this?? Please help...

 

[paulmarr]

Dear CrystalNovice,

There are many ways to view a Crystal Report without the software.

The easiest and least expensive way is for the user who has the CR software to export the report using a variety of formats from a Word documnet, Excel spreadsheet, to HTML files and pdf files, depending on the version of Crystal you are using.

There are also numerous third party tools that will let you view the report. You can find them by searching on "Crystal Reports Viewers" in popular search engines.

Crystal also has some software called Crystal Enterprise, which allows a user to view a report through their web browser. A free version of this comes with Crystal Reports 8.5. Mind you, there is no security, and the user must have access to the compnay intranet.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,

paulmarr@arcom.com.au

 

[databaseman]

When you have the report completely finished, tested and accepted by the users, compile it.
Save the report
Select Compile report from the report menu or click the Compile button on the toolbar
Follow the dialog box that appears
Specify Distribute options as required
Make sure to specify that Crystal include all needed files

With earlier CR versions (4.2, 5...) this wasn't as easy and I had (by Seagate Support instructions) to install CR on the taret machine and then uninstall it. According to them, this leaves certain DLLs behind which are then available to the distributed report at runtime.

Lotsa Luck!

Databaseman Database Man
Defender of Life, Liberty and the pursuit of accurate database reporting! Follow my free tek-tip adventures at:

http://www.hammerman.com/dbman.html

 

[kenhamady]

There is a FAQ on using compiled reports in the FAQ area. If you are using V8.x you will have to download the compile feature first. Ken Hamady, On-site/Phone Crystal Reports Training/Consulting
Quick Reference Guide to using Crystal in VB

http://www.kenhamady.com/