Font size decreases when exporting to PDF (Crystal Reports)

Symptom: When exporting or scheduling to Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format (PDF), the font size is reduced in the exported document. As a result, the barcode is too small to be recognized by a scanner.

Note

For Crystal Reports XI (11 or 11.5), see KB10054.

Resolution

This is a known issue with Crystal Reports which reduces the font size when it exports to a PDF file. The solution below is retrieved from Business Objects support site.

This known issue has been assigned Track ID ADAPT00145285, and affects the following:

  • Crystal Reports (CR) 10

  • Crystal Enterprise (CE) 10

  • Crystal Reports (CR) 9

  • Crystal Enterprise (CE) 9

  • Crystal Reports for Visual Studio 2005

  • Crystal Reports for Visual Studio .NET (CR for VS .NET) 2003

If the update does not fix the issue, try increasing the font size to compensate the loss during the export.

Crystal Reports 10

For Crystal Reports 10, the update for this issue is available at ftp://ftp1.businessobjects.com/outgoing/EHF/dbex10win_en.zip. Note: link is no longer valid, please follow the instructions below to manually edit registry.

This issue is addressed in the following components (and later versions):

  • Crxf_pdf.dll, version 10.0.5.598, dated 8/19/2004

  • Crxf_pdf_res_en.dll, version 10.0.5.598, dated 8/19/2004

With the update(s), the following registry subkey is added to override this behavior:

HKCR\SOFTWARE\Crystal Decisions\10.0\Crystal Reports\Export\PDF

By setting the value of ForceLargerFonts entry to 1, the font size is maintained.

Crystal Enterprise 10

For Crystal Enterprise 10 for Windows, the update for this issue is available at ftp://ftp1.businessobjects.com/outgoing/EHF/dbex10win_en.zip Note: link is no longer valid, please follow the instructions below to manually edit registry.

This issue is addressed in the following components (and later versions):

  • Crxf_pdf.dll, version 10.0.5.598, dated 8/19/2004

  • crxf_pdf_res_en.dll, version 10.0.5.598, dated 8/19/2004

With the update(s), the following registry subkey is added to override this behavior:

HKCR\SOFTWARE\Crystal Decisions\10.0\Crystal Reports\Export\PDF

By setting the value of ForceLargerFonts entry to 1, the font size is maintained.

Crystal Reports 9

For Crystal Enterprise 9 for Windows, the update for this issue is available at the following location: ftp://ftp1.businessobjects.com/outgoing/EHF/ce90dbexwin_en.zip. Note: link is no longer valid, please follow the instructions below to manually edit registry.

After applying this update, complete these steps:

  1. Create the following registry entry: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Crystal Decisions/9.0/Crystal Reports/Export/Pdf/ForceLargerFonts.

  2. Set the registry entry value to 1 to maintain the font size.

Crystal Enterprise 9

For Crystal Enterprise 9 for Windows, the update for this issue is available at the following location: ftp://ftp1.businessobjects.com/outgoing/EHF/ce90dbexwin_en.zip. Note: link is no longer valid, please follow the instructions below to manually edit registry.

After applying this update, complete these steps:

  1. Create the following registry entry: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Crystal Decisions/9.0/Crystal Reports/Export/Pdf/ForceLargerFonts.

  2. Set the registry entry value to 1 to maintain the font size.

Crystal Reports for Visual Studio .NET 2003

For Crystal Reports for Visual Studio .NET 2003, there is no file update to correct this issue.

The following are two possible workarounds:

  1. Design the report with a larger font size to compensate for the font size decrease in the exported PDF file.

  2. Programmatically increase the font size of the report prior to exporting in the application.

For a code example of this workaround, go to http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/advancedsearch?query=boj and search for knowledge base article 1219570.

Note: this issue will occur after installing the Hot Fix CR 1.1 .NET Patch for VS .NET 2003 (cr11netwin_en.zip). This Hot Fix will update the file crxf_pdf.dll to resolve the issue assigned Track ID ADAPT00102129.

For more information, go to http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/advancedsearch?query=boj and search for the following SAP Notes: 1214887, 1214975.

Additional Notes

If you use registry fix and only the key under HKEY_CURRENT_USER is updated, the change won't apply if the Crystal reports runtime runs under a different account. This is the case when you run Crystal Reports under IIS. You will need to apply the registry change to that account as well. Follow the steps below:

  1. Start Task Manager and determine the account that runs the host process. For example, for IIS6 the process is w3wp.exe.

  2. Start Registry Editor and navigate to HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList. Inspect each profile and you should see a list of SIDs started with S-1-5. Look at value of ProfileImagePath to determine the corresponding SID of the security account.

  3. Go to the following registry sub key HKEY_USERS[your security profile]\Software\Crystal Decisions\10.2\Crystal Reports\Export\Pdf.

  4. Right-click the sub key and click New > DWORD Value. Name the DWORD value ForceLargerFonts and set it to the value of 1.