Home/ Questions/Q 3441446
In Process

The Archive Base Latest Questions

Editorial Team
  • 0
Asked: 2026-05-18T08:33:15+00:00

I am working on a WinForms app that uses the ReportViewer control to show

  • 0

I am working on a WinForms app that uses the ReportViewer control to show a few Reporting Services reports. On these screens, we allow the user to print the report by calling the PrintDialog() method on the ReportViewer like so:

_reportViewer.PrintDialog();

This works fine in most cases, it brings up the standard windows print dialog, the user chooses what printer they want to print to, and it prints. However, when the user chooses to print to PDF using “Adobe PDF”, it throws a Win32Exception: The specified datatype is invalid. The file dialog to choose where to save the pdf doesn’t even come up.

This only happens with Adobe PDF printer. I installed NitroPDF and used their PDF printer and it works without a problem.

Does anybody have an idea on what could be causing this to happen?

Edit:

Here is the stack trace:

at System.Drawing.Printing.StandardPrintController.OnStartPrint(PrintDocument document, PrintEventArgs e)
at System.Windows.Forms.PrintControllerWithStatusDialog.OnStartPrint(PrintDocument document, PrintEventArgs e)
at System.Drawing.Printing.PrintController.Print(PrintDocument document)
at System.Drawing.Printing.PrintDocument.Print()
at Microsoft.Reporting.WinForms.ReportViewer.PrintDialog(PrinterSettings printerSettings)
at Microsoft.Reporting.WinForms.ReportViewer.PrintDialog()
Share

Leave an answer

You must login to add an answer.

Need An Account,

1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    This doesn’t truly fix the problem but solves it in the users’ eyes.

    Trap the error thrown by the PDF Printer then invoke the Export to PDF functionality built into Reporting Services. It doesn’t error in Winforms even when printing to the PDF Printer does. From the user perspective they “printed to pdf” like normal and the experience is identical. It’s a work around that works. 🙂

    • 0