When I preview a report, it displays in portrait rather than landscape.

Check to ensure that your default Windows printer supports landscape printing. If not, select another printer. This can especially be a problem in a Windows Terminal Server or Citrix environment.

Reporting4Act! seems quite slow when I run a report.

This can be caused by a lot of things, some of which you likely can't control (such as a busy network, a slow network, etc.) and others you can. Here are some things to try:

  • If you use Norton Anti-Virus, ensure that Enable SmartScan Technology is turned off (with other versions of Norton Anti-Virus or other anti-virus programs, a different but similar setting is involved).

  • Use a filter that returns a smaller set of records.

  • Reporting4Act! by default auto-fits each field so it's only as wide as the widest amount of data for that field. It does that by looking at each record to determine what the widest value is for every field. For large result sets, that can take some time (for example, 30 seconds for 200,000 records with 10 fields in one test we did). Turn off the Auto-fit column option in the Properties dialog for each field and manually enter a reasonable column width.

  • On some networks, GDIPlus.dll can cause slow performance if it's located on a network drive. In that case, you can delete the copy in the Reporting4Act! program folder.

  • Turn off the Create and display report snapshots option in the Options dialog.

I'm using Reporting4Act! in a Citrix or Windows Terminal Server environment. My session hung and after restarting it, I get an error indicating that I'm already logged into Reporting4Act! when I try to get back in.

Logins are maintained in a file called Logins.dbf in the Data subdirectory of the Reporting4Act! program directory. If your Citrix or Windows Terminal Server connection wasn't properly closed, it's possible your login record was damaged. Fortunately, this is easy to fix: have anyone else who's running Reporting4Act! exit the application, then delete Logins.dbf. This file is automatically recreated the next time you run Reporting4Act!.

I have the I use Outlook or a similar program for email (MAPI) setting turned on in the Options dialog but when I try to send an email, I get a "Either there is no default mail client or the current mail client cannot fulfill the messaging request. Please run Microsoft Outlook and set it as the default mail client." error message.

Reporting4Act! requires the 32-bit version of Outlook and cannot send emails if you installed the 64-bit version. Either install the 32-bit version or use SMTP instead.

When I email a report from Reporting4Act!, it isn't sent right away. I have to switch to Outlook and do a send/receive.

This is a problem with Microsoft Outlook 2002 and 2003; see http://support.microsoft.com/kb/317412 for details.

I have Microsoft Office installed but when I try to output a report to some Excel formats, I get an error message that Excel can't be loaded.

Microsoft Office can be installed in the "Click-to-run" virtualized mode that allows for faster setup and instant update. This mode, however, does not support a feature called "COM automation" which Reporting4Act! requires. For more information on "click-to-run," see http://blogs.technet.com/b/office2010/archive/2009/11/06/click-to-run-delivering-office-in-the-21st-century.aspx.

I'm getting corruption of some of Reporting4Act!'s data files.

There may be several reasons for this, but one common one is a bug in Microsoft's SMB2 protocol.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2028965

Others have found that the problem can be resolved by creating and setting to 0 the following REG_DWORD registry values in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\LanmanWorkstation\Parameters using RegEdit on the workstation:

  • FileInfoCacheLifetime
  • FileNotFoundCacheLifetime
  • DirectoryCacheLifetime

On the server, create a REG_DWORD registry value named Smb2 with a value of 0 in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\LanmanServer\Parameters (you'll have to restart the server after making this change).

Be sure you know what you are doing before making any changes using RegEdit.)

Reporting4Act! takes a long time (several minutes or longer) to start.

This can happen if Reporting4Act! is installed on a network; some versions of Windows can be slow when accessing network drives. Here are a couple of articles that discuss how to resolve this issue:

The changes in these articles require you make some low-level changes to your system, so if this isn't something you are comfortable doing, it would be a good idea to get assistance from your IT staff.

Another possibility is TCP auto-tuning, which under some conditions can slow down network traffic. See https://techjourney.net/disable-tcp-receive-window-auto-tuning-fix-slow-internet-cannot-load-web-page-cannot-download-email for details and a resolution to the problem.

There's another possibility. Normally, Reporting4Act! checks once a day to ensure that activation information is correct. However, if you don't have an Internet connection, this causes startup to take 30 seconds or so because it has to wait until the attempt to connect to our Web server times out. To speed up startup in this case, create a RegDays entry in the Options section of Data.ini in the Data subdirectory of the program folder (if you upgraded from an earlier version, this file may be in program folder instead) that tells the program to check less frequently. For example, this entry specifies checking every 15 days:

RegDays=15

After editing the layout of a report using the Advanced Report Designer, the buttons in the wizard don't work.

The culprit is TeamViewer, a utility that allows you to remotely control another computer. When you install TeamViewer, it adds a small button to the title bar of the window. That button lets you share just a window with someone rather than your whole screen. It appears that this interaction between opening the Advanced Report Designer and drawing that button is causing the issue. Turning that button off resolves the issue.

The Print Setup function takes a while and then displays a warning message.

This happens if you don't have a default printer defined. Be sure to set up a default printer for your Windows account.

I am getting strange errors and crashes when running the program.

Windows Data Execution Prevention (DEP) can cause problems like this. See http://www.thewindowsclub.com/turn-off-data-execution-prevention-dep for information on how to turn off DEP.


© Keystroke.ca, 2023 • Updated: 04/16/21
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