@$%@$# Crystal, stage #2.

Continuation of yesterday's colorful language ensues as my brain is once again subjected to the horrid twists and turns that belong to Crystal Reports. A software that could easily rival Bill Gates's crap if it monopolized the world of reporting. Thankfully, Gates in all his monopolizing glory will come up with something similar which will rival this Crystal monster. Anyone who has ever spent a day TRYING to program in Crystal to make Crystal talk to COM talk to SQL or Crystal talk to anything will probably either raise their glass and cheer how horrific this product is or groan in shared sympathy.

Yesterday's fix, btw for anyone who's currently wrestling with Crystal spewing out Excel spreadsheets and can't fathom what support.businessobjects.com (the site that supports Crystal and said other exports) is suggesting OR has tried it with little result goes like this. (Assuming that your computer is unlucky enough to have SP2 installed on a Windows machine)

#1: Delete the registry keys in the following directory: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/Classes/Excel.Sheet.8 (For 97/200 worksheets)

Value name: BrowserFlags
Data Type: REG_DWORD
Value: 8

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/Classes/Excel.Sheet.5 (For 7.0 worksheets)

Value name: BrowserFlags
Data Type: REG_DWORD
Value: 9

#2. Place the site which is generating Excel sheets from Crystal Reports into either Trusted Sites / Secure Sites in IE, and set that zone's security to the lowest possible. Allow all sorts of ActiveX, cookies, varying other little things that IE will block at a higher security.

That's just reference for the next time I have to deal with this. Next pain in the ass - if it shares the same stored procedure, the same COM file, and the same ASP file that takes in the parameters... then why does Crystal give me values and Excel gives me nothing??

(Oh, and the reason for the latest influx of posts is by request from my lovely Dane + stupid #$%@#$% Crystal woes!)