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Printing from RDC viewer produces compressed unreadable text

I have a report that acts as a container for multiple sub-reports. If I print this report directly from the crystal reports editor all is well. However, when I print a report from the RDC viewer embedded in a MS-Access appliction, some (if not all) of the text fields are compressed horizontally so that consectutive letter overlap.

If I print from the RDC viewer to a PDF writer, the reports pages are rendered correctly. I've tried to print to other office printers, but the results are always the same.

Does anyone have any advice on correcting this problem?

frodoman

Is the RDC viewer in MS-Access on the same computer as the crystal editor? I ask because Crystal formats the report based on the default printer driver when the report is created. If you print from a different machine that has a different default printer driver (even if sending to the same printer - it's the default that is key) then you will often get different results.

Exporting to PDF prior to printing (or printing to a pdf writer) is a commonly accepted way to give users a standard print output.

frodoman

Also, make sure the viewer is horizontally sized appropriately - if the viewer is narrow then the output will be rendered compressed to attempt to fit the horizontal viewer size...

rabroersma

ASKER

In this case, the viewer and editor are on the same computer. Exporting to PDF is a good solution, but this adds a step that I would like to avoid if I can. I think this would become an annoyance to my users.

The crystal viewer is embedded in an access form and the control is adjusted to use the entire form. The RDC viewer can scale the viewing size of the report, but even at 100 percent, the report has sufficient margin for viewing.

I should probably clarify one point; the reports are always rendered correctly for viewing. The text becomes compressed only on the hard-copies that are directly printed by the RDC viewer.

rabroersma

ASKER

I just wanted to add a addition point. It seems that this problem of compressed text is only occuring on my development computer. The other computers that load these reports are un-affected and print the reports correct.

This is rather odd. I am not sure how to address this problem with reinstalling Crystal 11 and the RDC viewer control.

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

frodoman

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rabroersma

ASKER

I was able to fix the problem only after un-installing both Crystal and the Viewer and this re-installing them. I believe that you were correct that somethins was corrupted. I am still curious about what caused this problem to surfice. Oh well....

Thanks for the suggestion!

Regards,
Richard Broersma Jr.

frodoman

Glad to help.