Following up on my article on correcting disappearing headers, a further issue with our web-report is that even an export to Excel (Data Only) from Crystal Reports 9, created extra columns.  This issue could not be replicated on the client machine (ie. from my workstation).  I would have to upload the report to the server, configure the web application to use the newly uploaded report, export to a Crystal Report, which in turn we export to Excel:

Note that as this is from within a web application, there are no extra options or dialogs to select.  The export had to work from this point on.  I can't take any credit for the below as it was copied from http://hosteddocs.ittoolbox.com/ST030504.pdf.  A "Crystal Decisions" documentation.

If you've been to the point where you're exporting a report to Excel, and only some of the column headers appear, then try this:

I googled this for ages and found different suggestions here and there but none of them produced consistent results.  One solution was to untick "Simplify page headers" on the Excel Format Options when you export the report.  Because our report is exported via a web-based system, this extra dialog doesn't appear when our users export their reports.  Not that it solved it as only some different headers appeared on the exported report when we followed that suggestion.

Consider the following report in design view, only the circled headings would appear on the exported report:

Intro

I know there are a lot of articles on the WWW detailing this process but none of them really worked for me.  I recently changed job and no longer have all my test machines at work.  Instead I only have the one workstation :eek  Still I've been asked to test some web applications (???) so I had to find a solution to suit me.  I'd done this before IE7 (so a long time since).

My office workstation setup for this is:

• HP CMT DC7900
• E5300 @ 2.60Ghz
• 2Gb RAM
• Windows XP Professional SP2 
• Internet Explorer 7

As you can tell, not the most up-to-date but unfortunately I need to stay near to my customer base and match their setups as closely as possible.

Basically I thought that the regional settings of a report generated using Report Builder 2.0 on a MS SQL Server 2008 instance were dependent on either the server or the client machine.  Realised that this was actually specified in the report. Here's a quick note on how to set Dates and Times used in parameter fields to UK format (dd/MM/yyyy).

• SQL Server 2008
• Report Builder 2.0
• BMC Service Desk Express 9.8

• Incident #
• Group Name
• Close Date & Time
• Assigned to Full Name
• Incident Type

Yes, well don't laugh, I could not find this on the WWW so I was obviously not using Google properly.  Anyway here's just a quick note on how to do if else statements in Report Builder 2.0

I'm looking at the following if statement:

If (MyFieldName = 0) Then
     Return 1
Else
     Return MyFieldName

Can be expressed as:

IIf(Fields!MyFieldName.Value = 0, 1, Fields!MyFieldName.Value)

The Issue

After modifying a report and on running it, Report Builder 2.0 returns the following error:

An error occurred during local report processing.
An error has occurred during report processing.
Query execution failed for dataset 'DataSet1'.
The variable name '@GroupName' has already been declared.  Variable names must be unique within a query batch or stored procedure.

Thought I'd put something here as a lot of my clients and friends are all surprised by the Aero features and weren't aware that these existed in Windows Vista (and originally from Linux variants).

Sometimes you may only have partial Aero effects. This can be because Windows may not think your machine is powerful enough to run these effects without affecting performance.

If this is happening to you, and you don’t mind about a possible slight slow down on performance you can force enable them -

1. Go to Control Panel -> System and Security -> System
2. Click on advanced system settings on the left and then performance settings.
3. Under the visual effects tab you should see that the option “ Let windows choose what’s best for my computer “ is by default checked.
4. Below it you should see a list of visual effects, some of which will be unchecked if you are not experiencing the full range of Aero features.
5. Select the custom option and then select all the effects from the list below it. Hit apply and ok and you should have all the Aero effects enabled.

Now what are these Aero effects?

Typing an ASCII character

In DOS:

Hold down the <Alt> key while typing the decimal number on the keyboard keypad. (Example:  <Alt>178)

 

In Windows for a DOS character:

Hold down <Alt> while typing the decimal on the keyboard keypad. (Example:  <Alt>230)

 

In Windows for a WIN character:

Hold down <Alt> while typing "0" then the decimal number on the keyboard keypad. (Example:  <Alt>0140)

I just had to put something here as I have been buying and returning failed/corrupt USB pens.  In the past few months I have been trying to upgrade my 16Gb USB Integral Pen from Play.Com to a 32Gb equivalent.  I use my USB pen as the "My Documents" folder on every computer I use.  It was fine with my 16Gb one but my 32Gb ones have all failed at some point.

I went for a cheap one on Play.com (Verbatim 32Gb@£49.99 & Kingston DataTraveler@?) and an even cheaper one on Ebay.com (Leather 64Gb@£29.99).  In hindsight, the Ebay one was obviously going to fail (faking the disk size).

I got badgered by my colleagues to splash out and get a worthwhile pen.  Aside from some other failures, I decided to get the bulletproof, waterproof, fireproof, shockproof 32Gb USB Pretec Pen (as advertised by Gadget Show on Five.tv).  Turns out this is an incredibly fragile pen. If files are being written to it and it gets nudged, this will corrupt the pen.  BTW I don't use the "remove device safely" rubbish as my old pen never did and it was fine for over a year.  The default setup in windows XP is that it doesn't need it.

Bulletproof, waterproof, fireproof, shockproof BUT NOT joe-proof! ...

 This is an issue relating to the Time Server Synchronization error.  Basically you start up windows live messenger and get the following error:

{rokbox title=|Messenger Error 80048820|}/images/screenshots/windows_live_error_80048820.png{/rokbox}

The Issue

People have reported that although they have manually set the date/time on their computer, this gets changed by the windows time server (time.windows.com) when connected to the Internet and for some reason it doesn't display the right date/time.

The Quick Fix

First off, check there aren't any Update for Windows 7 releases at Microsoft's Windows Update