Crystal Reports 2008 – Sections are collapsed and I can’t expand

crystal-reportscrystal-reports-2008

Background

I have a Crystal Reports 2008 file that came my way from a former employee's files; I'm tasked with making some changes.

Problem

  • When I open the report, I am told that the "default printer is not available".
  • Then all of the fields are collapsed in the main report.
  • I can fix this by going into page settings and manually setting the page size to 8.5×11, etc.
  • However, subreports still appear "collapsed" and changing page settings does not make them visible again.

Screenshot

This is how the subreport looks when it is opened.

enter image description here

Attempted Fixes

  • Manually dragging the sections to expand them. This produces no results as it appears they are collapsed too far to select any of the sections to pull down.
  • Page setup in Crystal Reports — works on the main page, but does not work for sub-reports.
  • Looking for Crystal bugs on the internet. I believe this to be a bug, but I haven't been able to find a source that confirms it.

Notes

  • I know there is data in the subreports, and mousing over the subreport will randomly highlight orange boxes around fields I can't see (the tooltip will then display the name of the data element for a split second)

Best Answer

This looks as though all of the sections within the report are suppressed or hidden, and you don't have the Show Hidden Sections option enabled.

I suggest enabling the Show Hidden Sections option - in older versions of Crystal this can be done by selecting Options... from the File menu, then checking the Show Hidden Sections checkbox in the Design view section of the Layout tab in the Options dialog.

Clicking OK after checking this option should result in all suppressed/hidden sections becoming visible.

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