Can an application user edit a report in preview mode?

[Former Member]

Hi there

Please could you provide some guidance for me?

I need to produce letters that hide and show sections/paragraphs based on formulae, but the users want to be able to edit the text.

Once a report has been created and is being displayed within the .Net CrystalReportViewer control (inside a .Net Windows application), is there any way I could permit the user to alter the displayed text and re-save the rpt file?

I know that I can use parameters, but it's not ideal for large paragraphs of text which may include some words in bold for example. The users are only likely to be changing a few words, such as the addressee of the letter. They have insisted that they need to be able to change anything on the letter.

I also know that (with Crystal XI or 2008) I can export to EditableRTF which does not put the text in frames like the standard RichTextFormat export option. The .Net RichTextBox component does not show headers or footers, which is a pain. I can show the RTFs in Word (even though they miss out lines and boxes from the report, but that's another matter) but quite frankly I'm terrified of the stories of deploying Office interop components in .Net apps.

When Crystal displays a report in preview mode you can click on pararaphs and it KNOWS that there is a 'field' there because it highlights the row(s) with a box. Is there any way we can just edit this text and save the report again?

Do you have any suggestions for me? I'm under pressure to produce an estimate for this area of work and need to know if it is possible with Crystal.

Thanks in advance

James Williams

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Some background info for you:

I am currently evaluating Crystal Reports 2008 for use within a major enterprise project. I have successfully used Crystal Reports Basic within Visual Studio, but we want a bit more functionality:

Reports will be produced based on ADO.NET Xml datasets and will be saved to a SQL Server db as blobs of the rpt files. We will be retrieving these rpt files for viewing within a .Net Windows application coded using Visual Studio 2008 in C#.

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[former_member183750 · Accepted solution]

No way. That would kind defeat the purpose of being a database report writer(?). You can access objects on the report via events of the viewer, see [this|https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/servlet/prt/portal/prtroot/com.sap.km.cm.docs/oss_notes_boj/sdn_oss_boj_dev/sap(bD1lbiZjPTAwMQ==)/bc/bsp/spn/scn_bosap/notes.do] note.

Not sure if that will help in any way, but thought I'd add the info as an FYI.

Ludek

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thanks.

That's really helpful - I was wondering if I could access the fields in some way.

I'll let you know how I get on (next week hopefully).

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

I think we are going to go down the exporting to RTF route. My colleague has done some more research in the MS interop area and thinks that he's nailed the deployment.

Thanks for the suggestion though.