I like to stay current, but it looks like I am going to have to remove CR SP3.   Ever since I installed it I have had problems saving my customer’s reports with data, which is something I have to do all the time.   It doesn’t affect reports that I create locally, but it does affect reports from most of my customers and I haven’t been able to figure out a way around the problem.  If someone else is having this problem I would be happy to compare notes.

Here is the typical scenario.  A customer sends me a report to fix and saves it with data.  I open it, make the changes and preview the changes using the saved data.  Everything so far works fine.   But when I save the modified report and I get this message:

"Additional parameter values are needed before this
report can be saved or viewed with data.
Click 'OK' to enter the missing values"

If I click ‘OK’ it tries to refresh the report, which I can’t do remotely.  If I click cancel then I can’t save my changes.  My only option is to turn off the  ‘save data with report’ option and then save the report, giving up my saved data.

The odd part is that this never happens with my own reports, only those coming from customers.  I did some experiments to see if I could make this happen on one of my own reports and nothing I did would generates this message.   Another factor is that it only happens if the report has parameters.   Other than that I haven’t been able to determine the difference that makes certain reports fail.  But here is the troubleshooting I did:

I took a report that fails in version 12.3 and opened it in version 1o.0 on the same PC.  I could change it and save it normally without the message.  But if I opened the modified version in v12.3 and tried to save it again, I would get the same message.  Even though it is now a version 10.0 report.

Then I took a report that fails in version 12.3 and opened it on two other PCs using versions 12.0 and 12.2.  Both saved normally, so the problem is something specific to SP3.   As further evidence I found this message mentioned in the release notes for SP3.  Apparently this was supposed to fix another problem, so I am pretty sure that what I am seeing is an unintended consequence.  It is mentioned in the document entitled “SAP Crystal Reports 2008 – Service Pack 3 Fixed Issues”, item ADAPT01267543.