Viewer Problems in CE10- Major Concern!!!!! 3

[satshergill]

I have published a report into CE10.
The report has a string field which I truncate to a certain length i.e first 30 characters even though the field can hold more

When running the report in CR10 everything is fine.
When I publish the report and view through any of the viewers(ActiveX, Java and DHTML) the field doesn't truncate and overlaps other data on the report

Apparently the workaround is to set the field format properties to 'can grow' by '1' line.

However for all of us that have 100's of reports from say CE8.5/9, this is going to cause major problems

My system is CE10 with all the latest patches on Win2000 server.

Make sure that the client machine where the report is viewed
has no full version of Crystal Reports

Can someone else test this for me....

 

[Turkbear]

Hi,
How are you doing the truncation?
What database?

 

[satshergill]

Oracle

and when I mean truncating drop a field onto a report then
make the size width say 1 inch. In CR the report display
only shows enough data for the width. In CE it overlaps the rest of the report

 

[Turkbear]

Hi, And you are sure the 'can grow' option is deselected?

Perhaps you could modify the datasource by creating a view on that table and have the field defined as a substr(field, 1, 30) or whatever size you want.
Then create a public synonym for that view that is the same as the table name and grant access only to the synonym.

 

[KingfisherINC]

I don't know if it has been addressed, but do you have the latest CE10 Viewer hot fix?

http://support.businessobjects.com/library/kbase/articles/c2014954.asp

Kingfisher

 

[tpaddack]

Or perhaps you can just restrict the length of the field to 30 characters using Left(<field>, 30)...

 

[ushpush]

Hi All

I am having a problem with the Viewer as well. I figured I would reply to this forum as there seem to be issues relating to the Viewer in general which may be of use for me.
My report seems to go over to 2 pages when it has been designed specifically for one page (A4 - landscape).
When I run the report locally i.e. through the off-line viewer it successful output to one A4 page, so why when running and viewing the report through the web via the viewer does it go over 2 pages...?

Any help would be appreciated.

Apologies if this is not the correct protocol to use when posting/replying in a forum.

 

[satshergill]

ushpush

Your problem seems to be related to printer page sizes
Make sure that the default printer on Enterprise server
is the same as Crystal reports you run locally

 

[kcgamz]

Satshergill:

Did you ever resolve this? We just went from CE8.5 to CE9 and am seeing the exact same thing ... string fields that used to be truncated in 8.5 now overlap the next field in 9.

All my symptoms seem to be the same as yours, except my current CE version is 9. Database is ORACLE. In one instance I have the field size set to 2.25 inches in CR, and viewing in CR the field truncates as expected. "Can Grow" is NOT enabled. However, when viewed in CE, the field overlaps the next one. When I click on the field in the CE viewer (doesn't matter whether it's ActiveX or DHTML) the field outline appears in the proper truncated space, but the data spills over into the next field.

Anyone else have a similar situation?

Jerry

 

[satshergill]

Yes you have to change all string fields so that they can grow and set no of lines to 1.

The official response from Crystal was

a decision was made, based on customer feedback that we would not truncate data across the web because there is no
way for users to get the rest of the data in a web environment. For instance, if a user views a
report in the designer that has currency data which is right-aligned and displays 1,002.43, the
user has the ability to click on the field and resize it to see that the data is actually
-$101,002.43. The user viewing over the web does not have this resizing benefit and
therefore needs to be shown all data in the cell to avoid making clerical errors.



Having said that, the ActiveX Viewer is slightly different in so much that it has access to the
physical printer information, beyond just calling the interface. If the physical printer and the
printer in the report are similar enough (I.e. same printer family, HP LaserJet 5 and HP LaserJet
6), then the ActiveX Viewer will clip the text to be the same as what is seen in the report
designer. Where the printers do not match (I.e. HP LaserJet and Epson PinWriter) we cannot
guarantee that the clipping will occur at the same point as what is in the report designer,
because the metrics for the printers are vastly different. In this case, we will always display all
the data, which means that overlapping may occur.

What I did was to write a VB app to

1. Search for all File location for .rpt files in the input/output folders of the Filestore
2. Then process each report and change each text/string field in each report and set the value to can grow is true
and no of lines to 1. Worked very nicely

The other method is to change each report manually, but becomes a pain when you have alot of reports and historic instances of these. This is the main reason I wrote a VB app.

Hope this helps

 

[kcgamz]

Thanks for the reply ... great info. I do have a lot of reports, but not many had string fields that I intentionally wanted to truncate, so I'll probably just do the manual work-around on those.

Thanks again.

Jerry

 

[bikejockey]

I have seen this problem in the ActiveX viewer even when the physical printer is the same printer as the report was designed under.

I for one do not agree with Crystal on the reasoning to print outside of a field's boundries. Now, not only can you still not see the ending of the field (since it has printed over what is following), but you also can't read the fields that got overprinted, so you are in worse shape than before.

I also would not call setting can grow with a max line of 1 to be a "fix". This will truncate the field based on the previous word boundary, so what you wind up with is seeing less of the data than you would have before, plus with it lopping off the entire last word (sometimes leaving quite a bit of white space at the end of the field), it makes it a whole lot less obvious that data is being truncated. All the white space at the end of the field where the rest of the data should have been, actually gives the false impression to the user that that is the complete value. At our site, setting can grow with a max of 1 has caused more problems than it has fixed.

In my book, this is still a bug in the viewer. The properties of the fields on the report are set because of a reason. If I had wanted it to overlap the next field, then I would have set it to. If I would have wanted it to truncated at word break, I would have set it that way. As it stands now, I don't have the control over the field display that I did have and that I need.

It winds up making us look bad because we can't format certain fields with certain data the way we need to (as we have in the past).

 

[satshergill]

You will have to make the field width wide enough so that all the data you want to display is displayed when you set can grow with a max line of 1. Alternativley set can grow to 0 lines. However this will multiple lines for that field
Take it up with Crystal Support. If you don't have Support then you will have to hope a fix comes out regardless. Times like this paying for support is worth it

 

[khartman]

Crystal does have a "fix" for this now. It should be out on their hotfix download page. I am still seeing a slight problem when using the ActiveX viewer (it still does not want to truncate that last letter) but at least now it does not obliterate the next two columns of data on the report. Ironically the reports look great and truncate properly when looking at them using the DHTML viewer.

--Ken

Kenneth Hartman
Manager, EIS
Hughes Network Systems

http://www.hns.com

 

[RMills944]

Have you tried doing a formula in the report such as left12(fieldname)?

 

[lyanch]

What happens when you export? Do they get the whole field or only the truncated portion? I format my reports "don't grow" for viewing, but want the whole field to export.

Lisa