Report to RTF (format differences between SR-1 and SP-3)

[Dale Penndorf]

I have a report which is converted to an RTF and then
attached to an Outlook email. Everything works great on
client machines with Access 2000 SR-1 installed, but if
the client has Access 2000 9.0.6926 SP-3 installed they
are getting formatting issues when the RTF is then viewed
with Microsoft Word.
The formatting issues are happening on those fields in
the report that are set to "Can Grow", and the data in
those fields has gone past the margins. Only on the SP-3
machines, the next line of the field is being jutted all
the way to the left margin (instead of directly below the
first line of this field as it should, and does, on SR-
1). Then, after a few bytes of data, a CRLF is being
generated even though there is no character anywhere in
the string for that field inside the report itself.
I am quite sure that SP-3 is causing this problem, but
is there a hotfix or a way to get around it without
reverting back to SR-1? Has anyone else seen this
behavior?

Dale Penndorf
(e-mail address removed)

 

[Rick Brandt]

I have a report which is converted to an RTF and then
attached to an Outlook email. Everything works great on
client machines with Access 2000 SR-1 installed, but if
the client has Access 2000 9.0.6926 SP-3 installed they
are getting formatting issues when the RTF is then viewed
with Microsoft Word.
The formatting issues are happening on those fields in
the report that are set to "Can Grow", and the data in
those fields has gone past the margins. Only on the SP-3
machines, the next line of the field is being jutted all
the way to the left margin (instead of directly below the
first line of this field as it should, and does, on SR-
1). Then, after a few bytes of data, a CRLF is being
generated even though there is no character anywhere in
the string for that field inside the report itself.
I am quite sure that SP-3 is causing this problem, but
is there a hotfix or a way to get around it without
reverting back to SR-1? Has anyone else seen this
behavior?

Access' output to RTF has always had these problems. I doubt that SP3 has anything
to do with it, but it will vary from machine to machine depending on the default
printer driver being used and in some cases the fonts that might be installed. AFAIK
there is no fix. You can tweak the report design and it might appear to have solved
the problem for a specific set of data being exported, but you will only find later
that different data still exhibits the problem.

In general, tabular data that doesn't need to "Grow" can be made pretty reliable by
making the controls in your report a bit wider that they would ordinarily need to be.
As soon as you are into growing controls though all bets are off. I stopped using
RTF output entirely a few years ago when I ran into this.

 

[Dale Penndorf]

I wish it were as simple as a font or printer driver
issue...all of the machines we need to run this on are in-
house and I can control all of the above if need be.

Unfortunately, I had two machines set up where everything
was working fine with my reports. To test my theory I
upgraded each of them to SP-3, ran the exact same reports
on the exact same data set and WHAM the problem occurred
just as it had been on all the other SP-3 machines I've
run it on. That is the main reason why I see this as
being an SP-3 issue. Furthermore, this makes the Output
To RTF feature completely pointless in Access...but it
doesn't surprise me they haven't fixed it yet. I doubt
if any Microsoft employees even read these
posts. ::sigh::

Dale

Anyone else have any idea on this one? Is there another
output option I should use instead of RTF where I can
still attach the file to an email, and have the end-user
open it in Word? Or will I have to write my own
proprietary Access Report to Microsoft Word document
conversion routine? Sheesh.

-----Original Message-----


Access' output to RTF has always had these problems. I doubt that SP3 has anything
to do with it, but it will vary from machine to machine depending on the default
printer driver being used and in some cases the fonts

that might be installed. AFAIK

 

[Rick Brandt]

I wish it were as simple as a font or printer driver
issue...all of the machines we need to run this on are in-
house and I can control all of the above if need be.

Unfortunately, I had two machines set up where everything
was working fine with my reports. To test my theory I
upgraded each of them to SP-3, ran the exact same reports
on the exact same data set and WHAM the problem occurred
just as it had been on all the other SP-3 machines I've
run it on. That is the main reason why I see this as
being an SP-3 issue.

Well the main reason I thought it wouldn't be related to SP3 in Access 2000 is
because I see the problem in Access 97. It is possible that for a particular report
with particular data in it that SP3 is causing a change that makes the problem
evident, but I would be _very_ surprised if the problem was indeed non-existent in
Access 2000 Pre-SP3 if it was already present in Access 97.

Stephen Lebans has a utility that takes the output of a Snapshot report and embeds it
in an RTF file so you can open it in Word. It's not a fully editable RTF file, but
it does eliminate the need for the Snapshot Viewer (which for some reason is not
available on MS site anymore).

 

[Dale Penndorf]

Thanks for the info, Rick. I'll look into that
utility. The end-user doesn't need to edit the
file...just view it, but for some reason they "have" to
view it in Word. Sounds like this utility is all I need.
Btw, I had found an article in the KB that stated there
are format issues when using Export or OutputTo RTF, but
that these were fixed with Access 2000. Maybe they had
it fixed in SR-1, and then broke it again with SP-3. I
wouldn't be surprised.

Dale