Tip: How to Print a Crystal Report Programmatically in ASP.NET?

You can print a Crystal Report using print option of Crystal Report Viewer. However, there are occasions when you want your application to print a report direct to printer without viewing the report in Crystal Report Viewer.

You can print a Crystal Report using print option of Crystal Report Viewer. However, there are occasions when you want your application to print a report direct to printer without viewing the report in Crystal Report Viewer.

The ReportDocument class provides PrintToPrinter method that may be used to print a CR direct to the printer. If no printer is selected, the default printer will be used to send the printing pages to.

 

The PrintToPrinter method takes four parameters.

 

nCopies : Indicates the number of copies to print.

collated : Indicates whether to collate the pages.

startPageN : Indicates the first page to print.

endPageN : Indicates the last page to print.

 

The following steps will guide you to achieve the same:

 

1. Add crystal report (.cr) file to your ASP.NET application.
2. Add a report instance on the page level.
   
   Dim report As MyReport = New MyReport

 

3. Populate reports data on Page_Init 
   
     ' Get data in a DataSet or DataTable

        Dim ds As DataSet = GetData()

        ' Fill report with the data

     report.SetDataSource(ds)

 

4. Print Report
   report.PrintToPrinter(1, False, 0, 0)

 

If you wish to print certain page range, change last two parameters From to To page number.

 

If you want to set page margins, you need to create a PageMargin object and set PrintOptions of the ReportDocument.

 

The following code sets page margins and printer name:

 

Dim margins As PageMargins =  Report.PrintOptions.PageMargins

   margins.bottomMargin = 200

   margins.leftMargin = 200

   margins.rightMargin = 50

   margins.topMargin = 100

   Report.PrintOptions.ApplyPageMargins(margins)

 

   ' Select the printer name

   Report.PrintOptions.PrinterName = printerName