How can I display Arabic data in Crystal Reports?

Question

I am using Crystal Reports 10. The reports are obtaining data from an Oracle 10G database. We have some data in Arabic. When I try to display the Arabic data it is showing as ?.

Any ideas on what I can do to display this correctly?

Answer 1

I've never used crystal reports and my oracle knowledge is limited, however I've done some work in Arabic. Things to look out for.

Does the Database have the arabic locale installed can it display right to left text.

Under windows check the languages settings and check that the option to include support for left to right writing systems is installed.

Check that your database is the international version and not one that only supports the latin character set. It may be that there is a problem converting between ASCII and Unicode.

Arabic Characters are not on the same ASCII code page as the Latin Character set your machine will be used to using, there might be a special version of crystal reports that supports arabic.

Check that the machine you are running crystal reports on has the arabic locale/fonts installed on it.

UPDATE

I've Had a quick look on the internet and you might want to look at this link

Here is a summary:

This issue can be solved when you create the reports without needing to write any extra code. I haven't tested this solution because I don't have any data to test it against.

First you want to make sure that you are using a UNICODE font which I'm sure you are probably already doing. Then to configure the "Right to Left" you can right click on any field and select "Format Text" or "Format Field". You should see a "Paragraph" tab. In there you can set the content to be "Left to Right" or "Right to Left". The button on the right allows you to make this setting conditional on a parameter value or something like that. I hope this helps.

Answer 2

Hello Omar;

I had installed arabic locale fonts on my machine where iam developing crystal reports. Once i try to execute the query in oracle sql developer iam able to see the arabic data. once i use crystal report to generate my report the arabic data is junked to ?.

Reg, Shaik.

Answer 3

Hello,

Tried to change the settings as suggested.but data is in same formaa(?).

Any help is appreciated.

Reg, Shaik.

Answer 4

1. Make sure you have Arabic support installed in Windows.
2. Add the correct LANG and NLS_LANG to your registry (for me it's ARABIC__QATAR.AR8MSWIN1256)

Answer 5

right click on your data base and select properties then select options then change collation to Arabic_CI_AS