Exporting report to PDF error

Question

This code has worked for years, but now I'm getting the following error when programmatically exporting a report to PDF:
"File does not begin with %PDF-"
My environment info:
Crystal Reports Developer XI Release 2 sp1
VS 2005 - .NET 2.0
IIS 6
Few lines of code used to export:
Response.ClearContent()
Response.ClearHeaders()
Response.ContentType = "application/pdf"
' Export the document to PDF
oRpt.ExportToHttpResponse(CrystalDecisions.Shared.ExportFormatType.PortableDocFormat, Response, False, "")
Response.Flush()
Response.Close()
One of the common answers that I've seen is uncheck the "display in browser" option in Acrobat, but that doesn't work and isn't really a viable solution anyway. I'm looking for a real permanent solution if one exists. TIA.
Michael

Answer 1

Hi folks, you're never gonna guess in a million years what the issue was. Yes, I finally found the problem. In my code where the db connection properties are set for the Crystal report document, it gets the values from the app's db connection string in the web.config (the one that ISD creates). It parses that string to set the properties, but it doesn't handle a "trusted connection" setting in that string. Well, some time ago, I set that db connection string to a "trusted connection" setting (to test something), so the app continued to work fine, and I never set it back to a fixed user id and pw. So, the actual problem was that the Crystal report was encountering a db connection problem, but it was spitting out a bogus message of "File does not begin with %PDF-". The strange thing, that isn't resolved yet, is why is the "problem" not throwing an exception or causing an error prior to the export/stream process. The only logical conclusion is that Crystal doesn't attempt to connect to the database until the export/stream process begins, and then it's too late and spits out an error message in the stream that is not in a proper PDF file format.
These issues are the kinda things that make you want to throw your monitor out the window. Once again, my love/hate relationship with Crystal Reports over the past 12 years has gone to the "hate" side. Thanks for your willingness to help.
BTW, the way I figured it out was to use the CrystalReportViewer and run the report - sure enough, it displayed the db connection error message, which led me down the right path.
Edited by: Michael Sumption on Aug 7, 2008 5:54 PM