Any time Crystal Reports exports to PDF there is a slight reduction in font size. So when a customer complained that their fonts were exporting inconsistently to PDF, I figured it would center around this topic.  But, what I found was something different. The report was being run from within Viewpoint’s Spectrum Software for construction. The report looked fine if we exported it to RPT format and opened it in the Crystal Reports designer, but the PDF version had inconsistent font sizes.

One example was a large block of text with four paragraphs. It was all formatted with the same font and the same size in Crystal. In PDF format the first paragraph was in one size and all the other paragraphs were in a different size. I cut the first paragraph out to make it a separate text object and left the remaining three paragraphs in one text object.  But the font change just moved down to the next paragraph break.  I had to make each paragraph it’s own text object to avoid font changes.

A second problem was that text objects and field objects would end up being reduced by different amounts, even though they started out the same size. For example, just before the text objects was a database memo field that was supposed be the same font size. If I started them both at font size 9.5 in the report, the memo field would end up at 8.5 while the text object would end up at 8.  If reduced the memo field to 9 the font would end up as 7.5. I tried several other combinations and couldn’t find one where the text objects and fields would end up the same size in the PDF.

The odd part was that I couldn’t replicate any of these problems in my local environment.  I opened their rpt file saved with their data in my Crystal Reports designer and it exported just fine. I even tried it in Crystal v10 which is 15 years old and uses Adobe 4.0 format.  It still exported here with consistent font  sizes. So it sounds like this might have something to do with the runtime environment associated with Spectrum.

Conclusion: If you are using Viewpoint’s Spectrum Software, watch out for PDF font sizes.  If you need help with these issues, give me a call.