Failed to Save Document?

[Former Member]

After making extensive changes to a Crystal Report with Sub Reports, I got a window titled "Crystal ActiveX Designer" and the message, "Failed to Save Document". Repeated tries yeilded no good results and the message just kept appearing until finally I had to abandon about an hour's worth of work and start all over again.

This itself was bad enough, but it then happened FOUR more time in one day - hence, I spent 8 hours trying to get about an hour's work done.

What the heck does this message mean?

What causes this message?!?!?!

How is it that such a silly, uninformative message can be written into any software that considers itself "business" software? My boss wants me to get a refund for the hours lost from SAP. Fat chance, I know -but really - where does such a useless message come from and what causes it?

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi, Bruce;

Which version of Crystal Reports are you using? Are you working in the Crystal Reports Designer, or is this in an application?

Have you installed the latest service pack for your version of Crystal Reports?

Regards,

Jonathan

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

The version is 12.1.0.892 and yes, I have installed the 1 Service Pack I am aware of for this product.

I get the error message in the Designer as specified in my prior message where I said the title of the window is "Crystal Reports ActiveX Designer" - so yes, its in the designer NOT runtime.

With respect, instead of asking me versions and service pack installs, is it possible to simply ask a software engineer what the heck this message actually means - because I dont think it has anything to do with any version or service pack involved.

The problem here is that stating "Failed to Save Document" tells me absolutely nothing helpful - did it fail to save because something was read-only? Out of memory? Folder crash?

I am a developer and we create such message boxes when testing conditions - I would like to know the condition that triggers this message. Obviously, it would have been nice if the Crystal developers thought that maybe they should say something a bit more than just "Failed to Save Document", but clearly they didnt bother...

...and that failure not to bother cost me hours of useless work that was lost with no reason why, and now I have to wonder how many more hours (days, weeks, months) I am going to lose doing Crystal work that wont get saved without any reason given so I cant even begin to debug any problem I might (or might not) actually have.

Again, with respect, if my boss asks me how long it will take to update a Crystal Report, I want to be able to give him a good estimate - but when Crystal does things like this, obviously I have to caveat all estimates by saying "If Crystal allows me to save my work without any completely vague message boxes..."

I apologize for the obvious frustration - but this is just ridiculous in a product like Crystal.

Could you please just ask a software engineer what circumstances trigger this kind of message.

Thanks

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi, Bruce;

Sorry for your frustration. As you posted in the .NET forum, I did need to ask if it was happening in an Application or not. As it is not, I will have to transfer your post over to our Design team for their input.

I do not know any of our engineers so cannot simply ask what the error means or what causes it. Perhaps someone in the Design team will have some idea.

Best Regards,

Jonathan

Edited by: Jonathan Parminter on Nov 5, 2009 9:58 AM

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

A bit of additional information...

I posted in the .NET forum because this particular message appears BOTH in the Crystal 2008 Designer and through Visual Studio 2005's Designer too.

But whatever - shift the message elsewhere as you feel is needed.

I am kind of stunned to hear you dont have access to engineers - how can you "support" any product where you cant communicate with those who built it? Thats absurd - but I realize thats not your fault.

Maybe someone in the other forum can provide an answer.

[former_member11696 · Accepted solution]

Hi Bruce,

We need a lot more info about what you are doing to the reports? Steps to duplicate would be of great help but since you are doing extensive modifications that may be hard to do.

Generally what changes are you doing?

Altering the data sources, adding/removing tables, changing the SQL in command objects?

Deleting Parameters, adding parameters?

Re-importing Subreports or are they linked and your linking is being broken

Changing formula fields references, also refers to the data source changes. Possibly you are ignoring warnings that fields no longer exist.

To answer your original question:

"I got a window titled "Crystal ActiveX Designer" and the message, "Failed to Save Document". Repeated tries yeilded no good results and the message just kept appearing until finally I had to abandon about an hour's worth of work and start all over again.

Need more info. First the ActiveX Designer is the embedded designer built into the .NET IDE for editing and designing reports. This is version 10.5 and therefore limited to CR 10 functionality. So if you are using Dynamic parameters this may be one of the causes of the error. It may also be that the hard drive or something has locked the report file and there you can't save it. You may have multiple CR Designs open and one of them has locked the file... Lots of reasons.

Then you say repeated tries yield no good results. What errors or warnign are you referring to?

What happens if you use the Save As option?

Rather than use the .NET IDE to edit your reports, use Crystal Report Designer only until we determine the cause.

To answer you question about getting a developer involved that won't happen with the info you have provided and unless we can duplicate your issue we can't escalate it. To compare it to your car: "I put my keys in the car and it no long works after I did something" Not a lot to go on...

Please provide all the info requested and we can start debugging the issue.

Thank you

Don

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Don,

Wow! Now THAT is what I call a good reply - thanks - and let me give you as much information as I can...

We have an "Executive Summary" report that is essentially 1 report with 9 sub-reports generated from 9 existing single reports (only that in the Exec Summary we show only totals and supress details through the 9 otherwise existing reports). When one of those 9 reports changes (as is the case here), the Executive Summary must be updated.

In this case, one of those 9 reports had a new Stored Proc written for it, so I had to update the stand-alone report (which I did, went fine, not a problem) and then update the sub-report in the Exec Summary.

So in short, yes, this did involve "repointing" a data source (e.g., Stored Proc name changed so I had to rejigger that), then re-import the report into the Exec Summary. There were NO Parameter changes. There were NO formula or even field changes. (e.g., Stored Proc DID change, but field names remained the same).

To address your comments about the .NET IDE side of things - We run TFS (Team Foundation Server) so I MUST use the .NET Crystal interface most of the time (95%?) to ensure changes get tracked. I would prefer to stick to the Crystal Designer, but I cant do that most of the time since we use TFS. However, I NEVER open more than one instance of the .NET Designer - just dont have the computing power for that - and no, no dynamic parameters were tinkered with, so thats likely out of the equation.

I DID try the "Save As..." route but still got the "Failed to Save Document" error even with that. This is what I mean when I say I did "repeated tries" trying to find a way to save the changes I had just invested a ton of time into. In the end I finally had to give up and abandon all the changes. (Note that I did finally re-do all that work, got it done, and was able to save it).

I use Crystal (via .NET most of the time) a great deal and generally dont run into this problem. Although I am "reading into" your reply to me - is it likely that I ran into this, this time, because I had the big Exec Summary report involved, with 9 subreports and may have maxed out memory or something like that? Really all I did on the Exec Summary is re-import a report - but indeed that report HAD been changed (new Stored Proc) just before I did that work.

Any advice would be helpful - however, I am keeping an eye on the "load" I put on Crystal through VS2005 as I am presuming (right or wrong...) that my recent difficulty and frustration was likely due to maxing out memory.

Possible? Off the wall? Any other advice?

Thanks,

Bruce

Edited by: Bruce Landry on Nov 9, 2009 2:30 PM

[former_member11696 · Accepted solution]

Hi Bruce,

Thank you for the details. CR keeps track of the tables and fields in the RPT file so when a change is done to your data sources, no matter what they are, you MUST verify the database using the menu option. This updates the info in the RPT as well as any references to the field indexes and formula, linking etc. It may be the cause but I don't think so.

I would ask TFS (Team Foundation Server) to see if they have had issues with files being locked. As a test If making changes to the report the same way you do it using the IDE in CR Designer doesn't cause problems and also copy the report and open it outside of TFS and if after making changes you don't get the error it would point the issue being in TFS.

This is something we won't support because it's a third party file management system. But we did fix an issue with Source Safe having to update and check out all files but that was fixed a long time ago.

I suggest you contact TFS and get them to debug their software. If it turns out to be a Cr issue we can then track it but we need to see proof it's our issue first.

Thanks again

Don

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thanks Don...

I use Verify Database a lot, so yes, I was verifying as I went along, but I concur with you that I dont (as well) think that was the problem.

None the less, we are Microsoft Premier Partners so I can get some attention from one of their TFS guys, and I will shift focus that way to chase this one down. And for the record, NO - I have never seen this behavior when using the Crystal Designer - it only happened through .NET and VS Designer.

Thanks for your help and I will consider this question answered from the Crystal side of things.

Again, thanks.

Bruce

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Bruce,

Just an FYI... I have had the unfortunate pleasure of experiencing this error, too. I use the CR Designer. It typically occurs after I have opened a CR file from a network shared drive while on a wireless connection, and lose my connection to the access point. I have observed that the act of losing network connectivity, while working on a file located on a network share, appears to be my trigger for the "Failed to Save Document" message.

Regards,

-Michael

[rod_weir · Accepted solution]

Getting this also.

Every time I have to use Crystal, I cringe....

Nothing seems to work well...even the simple things like trying to save a report.

What a joke

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Yup same thing here. No surprises really, I've come to expect this from CR now. I'm looking forward to moving to reporting services just so I no longer have to use this horrible piece of software.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

I think this is exactly what happened to me, working over a network.

Now, the report is opened and I can't save it and I also cant save it to my local machine. Any idea how I can get this report to save without losing all the changes?

Thanks

Jeff