An annoying printing issue with Crystal Reports 2008
- by Xience
A little background:
I have an extremely annoying printing issue with crystal reports. My environment is crystal reports 2008 SP2 on Windows 7 (64bit), Visual studio 2008 and .net framework 3.5 with all the latest updates for everything. The report is designed basically to render a small shelf label of the size (40mm width and 20mm height). In crystal when I set the page size to the above mentioned values and set orientation to portrait and take a preview, everything is displayed as i expect it to be and issuing a print command, it prints absolutely correct.
The problem:
The problem comes when i print this report from my program (in vb.net), dynamically setting data to some text fields, the result is that crystal somehow changes the print orientation, NOT the paper orientation as in portrait or landscape. Instead of printing from top left towards the bottom right, it rotates the whole output at 90 degrees to the left and reduces everything so small that it is barely visible, although it prints everything out. I have tested it on Intermec PF8t and Zebra GK420d label printers and a whole bunch of laser printers, but with the above stated page settings the output is always the same.
Another strange thing that i noticed while experimenting with page sizes if i switch to landscape mode, the print out is correct in its font sizes and positions but then the text gets truncated due to overflowing the page size.
Can anyone help me with this. Does crystal has anything like its own print drivers or something. I have tried to ensure to the best of my abilities that it is not a printer driver problem.