Printing Tips and Tricks for Crystal Reports

Duplex printing in Crystal Reports 

Duplex printing is dependent on the type of printer you have. You must verify that your printer supports duplex printing. Crystal Reports does not control a printer's duplex printing ability. The printer driver for the printer handles the duplex print control. In order to print in duplex mode you must verify the following:

• The duplex printer must be set as the default printer in Windows.

• The report must have the default printer selected in the Printer Setup dialog in Crystal Reports.

Printing subreports in different formats 

In Crystal Reports, you can format the main report and subreport to print in either Portrait or Landscape orientation. This is because the subreports are considered part of the main report and maintain formatting of the main report. Therefore, individual landscape or portrait page formatting cannot be set and only portrait or landscape formatting can be set for the entire report.

Printing is slow when using a dot matrix printer

When printing in Crystal Reports a virtual page (virtual picture) is generated. Therefore, when printing to a dot matrix printer the printing speed is very slow. A dot matrix printer will take longer to print a picture type file. Therefore, the suggested workaround is to export the report to text format and print the exported file.

It is also possible to apply Text Mode settings to a dot matrix printer to improve printing speed. Printing in Graphics Mode can result in a better quality print out, however the printing speed is slower.