How do control output size for Crystal Reports that are converted to PDF's

[dnsdaniel]

Hi there,

We have an ERP company with many customers using Zebra printers and are experiencing an issue when converting from PDF and trying to print to the correct paper-size. Our application is Delphi and exports using Crystal Reports, but is presented over the web using Thinfinity Virtual UI. As a stand-alone program, labels print fine, but now that users access and print from our ERP over a web-browser, we have this PDF conversion issue to contend with. No matter how we alter the label size or orientation, we cannot get the output to come out right for the Zebra labels (various sizes 2 ¼ x 1 ¼, etc.).

We are presuming that others have ran into the same issue with PDF conversion and Crystal Reports, but the only article we’ve been able to find is here, and wasn’t helpful to our situation, because we need labels to bypass print dialog screens and print directly to the printer, so we cannot be changing the output manually each time, we need a programmatic solution.

It’s like an overall scaling issue (zoom) and is very tricky to work on because if you print-preview the output on the screen doesn’t look anything like what comes out on the printer. When we make the image landscape, it prints portrait, and vice-versa, and the font is so small we can’t read. We can’t increase the font in the report due to space, so its all very tricky. Currently, we have clients down who cannot print labels, so any help or suggestions are appreciated.

We did get one customer up-and-running, by scaling the width and height, but at least two of our labels cannot be fixed with that method and will require some other solution.

The Thinfinity Virtual UI by Cybele Software, which presents our Delphi app on the web, has only a few conversion commands: VirtualUI Methods.

We are also reaching out to them for help, of course, though we think a Crystal Reports expert has likely encountered this, before, and might could better advise.

Thank you so much!

Daniel

[DellSC]

There are a couple of things to think about here:

1. Crystal uses information about the default printer saved with the report to render the report. So, you'll probably want to turn on "No Printer (optimize for screen display)" in the Page Settings of the report.

2. There is a known complication when converting certain fonts to PDF. There is a registry setting that can be used to get around this. Go to https://launchpad.support.sap.com/#/notes/2165260. At the top there is information about where to go in the registry to set the key. Then look for "ForceLargerFonts" to get the information. This needs to happen on the web server.

-Dell

[dnsdaniel]

I will check into that, thank you. Right now, it is redirecting your link to https://launchpad.support.sap.com/assets/shell/public-user.htm, instead, so I reached out to SAP.