Symptoms

When you export a report to HTML 4.0 format and send it by e-mail using the Use the report output as the message body option, the report may not appear to be formatted correctly when viewed in some e-mail clients (such as Outlook 2007).

Cause

When you export using HTML format, Crystal Reports makes extensive use of dynamic positioning and other CSS attributes to format the HTML. The Outlook 2007 client (and some others) ignore much of the formatting code and therefore display the output incorrectly.

Workaround

There are two workarounds for this problem:

1. Send the report output as an attachment, rather than as the body of the e-mail message. When the recipient opens the attachment, it will be opened by the recipient's Web browser, which will display the HTML correctly.
2. Choose the "HTML 3.2" format instead of "HTML 4.0." With this older HTML standard, Crystal Reports does not use CSS positioning, and the report will display better in affected e-mail clients.

Status

This is an issue with the HTML rendering by Outlook and other e-mail clients, and is not a problem with Report Commander or Crystal Reports.