Good morning Don,
Honestly I'm not sure which API's are used to export. It's a cloud based, SQL backend. Currently using one CSV, which I'd attach to the thread, unfortunately it has too much info in it that if I cut it out it wouldn't give you anything.
I have tried both connection types, both a straight Text connection through CR to my CSV, as well as an XLS ODBC connection to the XLS file, both with the same result.
The automation was that Crystal Reports was built in to the last application, so it would automatically connect to the live database, you layout your fields, and select your date/parameters, and it would pop quickly. I believe if I had a straight connection to the back end database this would work much better, but alas.
I will say in looking at the CSV, it does appear that the fields that are erroneously capping at 255 are just looking at the first line of the field, and not the whole field. Many of these entries have line breaks in them, so that may be what's causing the problem. Having to re-map the fields has been frustrating, but having more than 255 characters populate is much more important.
The best part is that it's worked perfectly during testing, until we decided to go live on March 1, then it stopped working.
I did start the testing process with a trial of CR 2013, then after it was up, purchased 2011, because we're a non profit and needed to save money on licensing. The report did seem to work just fine after I installed 2011, so not sure that affected it. Just wanted to add some context.
Thanks for any guidance, and I'm happy to email rpt/csv files for reference, just trying to keep them out of public eye if possible.
Kevin