Improved Custom ‘Export Button’ on Crystal Reports for Visual Studio

Crystal report works great when the export feature is used to export reports to PDF and word, but the one real drawback is the ‘Export to Excel’ feature. No matter how well you in designing the crystal report, the export to excel output is always skewed. It is the way Crystal Report runtime engine maps the objects and places them in excel cells based on the (x,y) position of the original Crystal Objects in the .RPT file.

I did not like how the default export feature was working on crystal reports and also wanted new features like:

1. More uniform export to excel feature with less dummy rows and columns and more visually appealing output.   
2. Restrict the number of export features to only Excel, PDF and Microsoft word and remove all the unnecessary list of export options that the system provides.
3.  Control over Export file fonts, regardless of what font the Crystal report was developed on.
4. A friendly option in the ‘Export Successful ‘message box for users to click on a link which opens the export file for them without going to the folder where the report was exported.
5. Fixed width of rows for uniformity.

So let’s begin the process on steps:

Step 1: Assumptions

• You are using Visual Studio 2005 or higher.
• Crystal Report viewer is hosted in a windows form ‘ReportViewer.cs’
• The example is for the report being exported to excel but it can be used for export to other formats

Step 2: Load data to the report via XML or Memory Stream

 private ReportDocument myReport = null;  
 private void ReportViewer_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)   
 {  
    myReport = new ReportDocument();  
    myData = new DataSet();  
    try   
    {  
      switch (_inputType)   
      {  
         case DataInputType.ByteArray:  
            myData.ReadXml(new System.IO.MemoryStream(_reportData));  
            break;  
         case DataInputType.MemoryStream:  
            stream.Seek(0, SeekOrigin.Begin);  
            myData.ReadXml(_stream);  
            break;  
      }  
      //Load RPT file  
      myReport.Load(reportPath + _RPTName);  
      myReport.SetDataSource(myData);  
      crystalReportViewer1.ShowFirstPage();  
      crystalReportViewer1.ShowGroupTreeButton = true;  
      crystalReportViewer1.ReportSource = myReport;  
    }  
   catch (Exception ex)   
    {  
        ErrorHandler.PublishError(false, "Error displaying report.", ex, true, true);  
    }  
 }  

Step 3: Hide the default export button and add our custom clone on the same place

 //Loop through all the controls in the crystal viewer, Strip the default export button and put a custom export button, Items [0] being the first button which happens to be the export button.  
       
 foreach (Control control in crystalReportViewer1.Controls)   
 {  
    if (control is System.Windows.Forms.ToolStrip)  
    {  
      //Remove Default Export Button, items[0]  
      ToolStripItem tsOriginalItem = ((ToolStrip) control).Items [0];  
      ((ToolStrip) control).Items.RemoveAt(0);  
   
       //Add a clone of Custom Button  
       ToolStripItem tsNewItem = ((ToolStrip) control).Items.Add("");  
        
      //Give this button the same tag,image and tooltip text so it looks and smells like the default export button  
      tsNewItem.ToolTipText = tsOriginalItem.ToolTipText;  
      tsNewItem.Tag = tsOriginalItem.Tag;  
      tsNewItem.Image = tsOriginalItem.Image;  
   
      ((ToolStrip) control).Items.Insert(0, tsNewItem);  
          
      //Write new click event for the new export button  
      tsNewItem.Click += new EventHandler(tsNewItem_Click);  
    }  
 }  
   

Step 4: Define your own custom save file dialogue window when the export button in step 3 is clicked.