Exporting Excel in Crystal Report Viewer

[Former Member]

Hi there,

We are having a program which display reports via the Crystal Report Viewer 8.5, the reports display fine in the viewer.

However, when user try to export in Excel 5.0 (Extended) format, it will sometimes fail, where the program and the Crystal Report Viewer close after choosing the format options and click OK.

From what we experience so far, it will fail usually in the first run of the report after inactivity on the server for a while. After failing, it will succeed exporting the same report.

The program is running on Windows server 2008 R2 64bit.

Appreciate if anyone could advise and share any possible solutions.

Thank you!

[former_member183750 · Accepted solution]

Hi Francis

I moved your post to the Reports - Legacy SDKs SCN Space, suspecting that since the app is using CR 8.5, it will not be using .NET(?).

Now, CR 8.5 was released in 1998, when WIN Server 2008 was not even on Bill's drawing board, so asking that app to work in that environment is just asking too much. To add to that with CR 8.5 the app is using either the OCX or the RDC SDKs, both of which have been retired a long, long time ago.

Your only option is to rewrite the app in VS 201 or later, using "SAP Crystal Reports, Developer Version for Visual Studio .NET".

- Ludek

Senior Support Engineer AGS Product Support, Global Support Center Canada

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[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hello Ludek,

Thank you for the reply.

The app is indeed a vendor solution, so it is really a black box to us. However it can execute customized reports via the app, and we have built those reports long time ago using CR 8.5.

To trace back, the app with CR 8.5 was working until we upgrade our Citrix server recently (from Window server 2003 to 2008). Since then the export function in CR 8.5 encounters problem, but not always. Usually the first run will fail, and subsequent runs will be fine.

So I am thinking will there be any missing DLL or other components which cause this symptoms.

Obviously if there is not other options we will consider to rewrite with the newer technologies, but there will few hundred of reports we have on hand, so our preference is try to keep as it is.

Appreciate if you have any experience or suggestion that we could try.

Thank you so much!

[former_member183750 · Accepted solution]

It's not a missing DLL issue. Rather it is how new Operating Systems work (or not) with COM and ActiveX controls. Like I said, CR 8.5 never supported anything like WIN 2008.

- Ludek

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thanks Ludek for your information.