Crystal Reports Viewer Failed to export pdf ?

Question

Hi All , Today Faced this problem

"Crystal Reports Viewer Failed to export pdf"

In Visual Basic 6 + Crystal Reports10 + Access Database16 +In Last windows11 24H Update

Thnx

Answer 1

Hi All,

I encountered the same issue with Visual Basic 6 + Crystal Reports 10 after the Windows 11 24H2 update. After extensive testing, I discovered that the issue is directly related to the Times New Roman font (at least that was the case for me).

How I Discovered the Problem:

I went through my .RPT file field by field, deleting one field at a time and testing after each deletion. My report was about 90% in Arial, but when I deleted the last field that was using Times New Roman, the problem was resolved. This confirmed that, in my case, Arial worked fine, and only Times New Roman caused the issue.

Solution:

By switching the font used in my Crystal Reports templates (.RPT files) from Times New Roman to Arial, the export to PDF functionality started working again without errors. It seems the issue lies in the specific version of Times New Roman (7.05) that comes with the latest Windows 11 update.

I hope this helps others dealing with this frustrating issue!

Rodrigo Schmidt

Answer 2

It may be due to compatibility issues between the various components (VB6, Crystal Reports 10, Access Database 16, and Windows 11 24H2 update).

Crystal Reports 10 is quite old and may have compatibility problems with Windows 11.

Switch to a newer version like SAP Crystal Reports 2020, which supports modern environments.

Migrate from VB6 to .NET for better compatibility and maintainability.

Answer 3

I have identified the cause to be a font issue. I have confirmed that Arial is broken in Windows 11 24H2. You will notice that on the computers that are giving that error, the Arial font is 7.03 versus on 23H2 its 7.00 or 7.01. I am testing Times New Roman and Calibiri now. But i can confirm that if you use some other font in your crystal reports like Garamond then the issue goes away.

Answer 4

In my case, I believe it seems to be when a report has a combination of both Arial and Times New Roman fonts. We have reports in Times New Roman only and were not affected. So I have changed the problem reports to single font in our case to Arial as the report was 95% Arial & 5% Times New Roman. Doing this seems to have resolved the issue.

Answer 5

My colleague found the following solution which avoids the need to reformat dozens of reports.

1. Using the Registry Editor, remove the affected fonts - https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/deleting-protected-system-fonts/141fc4b8-34fb-4ef3-aaa3-51fce725235c - (NB: There may be more than one to delete ie. bold italic etc)
2. Reboot computer
3. Restore default fonts - https://woshub.com/how-to-restore-default-fonts-in-windows-8-1/#h2_4 - download DefaultFonts-Win11.zip , extract and then select all the Arial fonts (arial.tff, arialbd.tff, arialbi.tff, ariali.tff) and then right click them and select Install (overwrite if asked)
4. Repeat step 3 for the Times New Roman fonts (times.tff, timesbd.tff, timesbi.tff, timesi.tff).

PDF Exports are now produced normally.

Hope it works in your case.