Crystal Reports 2008 - Blank page on server only

[Former Member]

Crystal Reports 2008 - Blank page on server only

My report is developed in the Crystal Reports 2008 Report Designer 12.0.0.683.

I have a .NET application that takes the report file, an ODBC connection and exports the resulting report to PDF. This application is deployed as an MSI and includes the Crystal Reports .msm merge module. The report uses multiple views and tables from a single database to create invoices in PDF format.

Problem: For one particular invoice, a blank page is being added to the end of the invoice. This blank page contains the report's standard page header. There is no missing data and no missing sections on the invoice. This is only occurring when the pdf is generated on a Windows Server 2008 x64 server where the application is deployed using the merge modules.

I have installed the application locally on my Windows Vista Business x86 system and the generated PDF does NOT contain the blank page at the end.

The blank page is not generated when previewing the report in Report Designer. For the particular invoice this is occurring on, footer F and footer G are blank and therefore suppressed.

Please bear in mind that this happens only for one particular invoice that uses this report file and does not happen from my local system using the same .rpt file.

The report is constructed of the following sections:

-Page Header (suppressed on page 1)

-Grp1 header A (watermark conditionally suppressed based upon a parameter)

-Grp1 header B (Keep together - always fits onto a single page)

-Details

-Grp1 footer A (Keep together)

-Grp1 footer B (Conditionally suppressed based upon data)

-Grp1 footer C (Keep together)

-Grp1 footer D (Contains sub report(suppressed when blank). Keep together. Suppress blank section. New page before but (Not OnLastRecord))

-Grp1 footer E (Contains sub report(suppressed when blank). Keep together. Suppress blank section.)

-Grp1 footer F (Contains sub report(suppressed when blank). Keep together. Suppress blank section.)

-Grp1 footer G (Contains sub report(suppressed when blank). Keep together. Suppress blank section.)

-Report footer (Always blank. Suppress blank section)

-Page footer (Fixed static content, displayed on every page.)

Edited by: alibaabaa on Oct 12, 2009 12:41 PM

Edited by: alibaabaa on Oct 12, 2009 12:45 PM

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi;

Is the same runtime installed on the 64 bit system? I notice from your version number that you do not have any service packs installed on the dev system. SP 2 is out and may help.

Compare the printer settings between the two systems. Try installing the same printer driver on the 64 bit system.

Also, was the .NET application compiled as 32 bit, or Any CPU? Whichever it was, try switching it then recompiling to see if that helps.

Best Regards,

Jonathan

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thanks for responding, Jonathan.

Is the same runtime installed on the 64 bit system? I notice from your version number that you do not have any service packs installed on the dev system. SP 2 is out and may help.

I have installed SP1 and SP2 this morning, resaved the report file and tried again but the same problem remains.

I'm not sure how to answer your runtime question. I am using the same application built with the same merge modules on both the dev machine and the production server. Of course, the dev machine has the additional complication of having Crystal Reports 2008 installed. Perhaps this is causing the difference?

Compare the printer settings between the two systems. Try installing the same printer driver on the 64 bit system.

Perhaps I am misinterpreting your suggestion, but I am not printing the invoices. I am only exporting them to PDF. It is the PDF that has the extra page. Is there a 'print to PDF' driver of some sort that I need?

Also, was the .NET application compiled as 32 bit, or Any CPU? Whichever it was, try switching it then recompiling to see if that helps.

I tried switching to Any CPU but this caused the Crystal Reports module not to load at all on the 64bit Windows server.

Thank you for your suggestions, but my problem remains. Is it worth trying with the redistributable msi rather than using the merge modules? If so, could you recommend which one I should use? I am using Visual Studio 2008 Professional.

[Former Member]

This has been solved.

I don't really understand why, but the report header section of suppressed subreports were still adding whitespace to the end of the main report. After suppressing the report header section of every subreport, the blank pages have gone.

[Former Member]

Further to my previous post, I tried building the application using the runtime msi rather than merge module and the same problem can be observed. However, after some further trial and error, I believe my problem is slightly different to that originally posed.

I generated two invoice pdfs. I used the same data but generated one locally and one remotely on the server. In the details section, the locally created copy fits one more line of detail onto each page than the copy generated remotely. Upon printing out the two pages (both PRINTED locally) and holding them up one behind the other, the output on the server-generated page is displaced slightly down and to the left compared to the locally-generated page.