Select Whether the Report Will Be Displayed, Printed, or Exported Using Visual Basic .NET

10.4 Select Whether the Report Will Be Displayed, Printed, or Exported Using Visual Basic .NET Code I know I can use the Crystal Report Viewer to print and export my reports, but I want

10.4 Select Whether the Report Will Be Displayed, Printed, or Exported Using Visual Basic NET Code

I know I can use the Crystal Report Viewer to print and export my reports, but I want to

be able to have control over that, and maybe not even include the Viewer in some cases

Technique

For this How-To, you will use a Tab control to display the three options for the user: Print, Export, and View (see Figure 10.18)

Figure 10.18 You have flexibility when it comes to letting your users work with

reports

The first tab, Print, allows you to specify the number of copies to print, along with the starting and ending pages

Printing Using the Report Document

This page will use the PrintToPrinter method shown here:

Me.rdHowTo10_4.PrintToPrinter(Me.txtNumOfCopies.Text, False,

Me.txtStartPage.Text, Me.txtEndPage.Text)

The PrintOptions object, found on the ReportDocument, is very useful The PrintOptions object has the following properties: PaperOrientation, PaperSize, PaperSource,

PrinterDuplex, and PrinterName You can set these properties either at design time using the property sheet, or at runtime using code

Exporting Using the Report Document

When you're exporting using the Report document, you will be using the ExportOptions object The ExportOptions object is made up of four other properties/objects:

• DestinationOptions This is made up of one of three possible objects:

DiskFileDestinationOptions, ExchangeFolderDestinationOptions, or

MicrosoftMailDestinationOptions

• ExportDestinationType This gets or sets the export destination type This will be

DiskFile, ExchangeFolder, MicrosoftMail, or NoDestinationType

• ExportFormatType This gets or sets the export format type It can be one of the

following: Excel, HTML32, HTML40, NoFormat, PortableDocFormat, RichText,

or WordForWindows

• FormatOptions This gets or sets the FormatOptions It can be

ExcelFormatOptions, HTMLFormatOptions, or PdfRtfWordFormatOptions

To execute the export, you use the Export method of the DocumentReport object You can see the page for exporting in Figure 10.19

Figure 10.19 You can control which types of files you want the user to export

The View tab uses a CrystalReportViewer object on the tab page

Steps

Open and run the Visual Basic NET-Chapter 10 solution Click on the button labeled How-To 10.4 Clicking on the tabs, you can see the three options you have to work with Clicking on the Print button prints your report to the default printer When you go to the Export tab and click the Export button, a message appears stating that the data has been exported The last tab, View, displays the report in a Viewer

1 Create a Windows Form Then place a Tab control on your form

2 Add pages for Print, Export, and View, using the TabPages property of the Tab control

3 Drag on a ReportDocument object, and set it to point to the report you created in How-To 10.1 Then name your report document rdHowTo10_4

4 Place the controls shown in Figure 10.18 and 10.19 onto the tab page with the properties set forth in Table 10.3

Table 10.3 Controls for the Tab Pages Tab Page Object Property Setting

Label Text File Name

View CrystalReportViewer Anchor Top, Bottom, Left, Right

5 Type Excel and Word Document into the Items collection of lstExportType

6 Add the code in Listing 10.1 to the Click event of btnPrint

Listing 10.1 frmHowTo10_4.vb: Printing the Report

Private Sub btnPrint_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, _

ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles btnPrint.Click

Dim po As PrintDialog

Me.rdHowTo10_4.PrintToPrinter(Me.txtNumOfCopies.Text, False, _

Me.txtStartPage.Text, Me.txtEndPage.Text)

End Sub

7 Add the code in Listing 10.2 to the Click event of btnExport This code tests the value of lstExportType and assigns the appropriate ExportFormatType and file extension (strExt) The DiskFileDestinationOptions information is supplied, and the Export method is called to complete the export

Listing 10.2 frmHowTo10_4.vb: Exporting the Report

Private Sub btnExport_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, _

ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles btnExport.Click

Dim strExt As String

Try

With Me.rdHowTo10_4.ExportOptions

Select Case lstExportType.SelectedItem

Case "Excel"

ExportFormatType = _

CrystalDecisions.[Shared].ExportFormatType.Excel

strExt = ".xls"

Case "Word Document"

ExportFormatType =

CrystalDecisions.[Shared].ExportFormatType.WordForWindows strExt = ".Doc"

End Select

ExportDestinationType = _

CrystalDecisions.[Shared].ExportDestinationType.DiskFile

Dim ddo As New CrystalDecisions.Shared.DiskFileDestinationOptions()

ddo.DiskFileName = Me.txtExportFilePath.Text & _

Me.txtExportFileName.Text & strExt

DestinationOptions = ddo

End With

Me.rdHowTo10_4.Export()

MessageBox.Show("Report Exported!")

Catch excp As Exception

MessageBox.Show(excp.Message)

End Try

End Sub

Comments

As you can see, very little code is needed to provide a great deal of functionality

Sometimes when you're using tools such as the Viewer in a tabbed form, the tab pages can become cluttered If you want to limit the power of the Viewer or make it more

streamlined, you can turn off the toolbar and group display by setting DisplayToolbar and DisplayGroupTree to False on the CrystalReportViewer