Operation Manual

Printing, Exporting, and Viewing Reports
Distributing reports
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Crystal Reports User’s Guide 387
To get the best output from Excel export formats, you should design your
reports in an Excel-friendly way. For more information, refer to the Technical
Brief called “Exporting to Microsoft Excel” found on the Business Objects
Support site at:
http://support.businessobjects.com/communityCS/TechnicalPapers/
scr_exportexcel.pdf.asp
Note: The output from both the Microsoft Excel and the Microsoft Excel -
Data only formats is compatible with Microsoft Excel 97 and later versions.
Microsoft Word (RTF)
Microsoft Word (RTF) is a page-based, exact format that produces an RTF
(Rich Text Format) file. The exported file contains text and drawing objects to
represent report objects. Individual objects are placed in text frames. This
format is intended for use in applications such as fill-out forms where the
space for entering text is reserved as empty text objects.
Almost all of the formatting is retained in this export format. Text objects
cannot, however, be placed outside the left edge of the page. Therefore, if
you have text objects in your report that are placed before the left edge of the
printable area, they will be pushed right. (This is most noticeable in reports
with wide pages.)
Microsoft Word - Editable (RTF)
The Microsoft Word - Editable (RTF) format is different from Microsoft Word
(RTF) format; it is a page-based format, but not all of the layout and formatting
are preserved in the output. This format converts all of the report object
contents to text lines. Unlike Microsoft Word (RTF) format, this format does not
use text frames. Text formatting is retained, but attributes such as background
color, fill pattern, and so on may not be retained. All images in your report are
inlined with the textual content and, therefore, the images automatically shift to
accommodate text when the document is edited in Microsoft Word. This format
does not export line and box objects from your report.
The Microsoft Word - Editable (RTF) format has an option to insert page
breaks at the end of each report page. This option may not correspond to the
page breaks created by Microsoft Word; the option is used mainly to separate
your report-page contents.
ODBC
ODBC is a record-based, data-exchange format. When you use this format,
you can export your report data to any ODBC-compliant database.