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Problems with Postie and Crystal Reports 

Keywords: 	 Crystal Reports

Question:

I'm having a problem with the Postie Extender sending emails. When I install Crystal Reports 8.5, I can no longer send an email using the Postie Extender. I get a message that indicates "cannot login to email server" (don't remember the exact message).

I'm comfortable that the problem is caused by the CR8.5 installation because I can send an email without problem before, can't send after the installation and when I do a complete system recovery (to remove CR8.5), I can send again.

Has anyone seen this problem? Please let me know, thanks!

Thanks in advance.

Answer:

For those of you that wish to use Postie with Crystal Reports installed on a PC, I found a workaround if you are not using a Crystal Info Server with Crystal Reports. When you install Crystal Reports, it installs Crystal Web Services. Installing web services is not optional... they are installed along with Crystal Report Designer.

The specific web service that is causing the the problem is the 'info-aps' client. Info-aps normally runs on a server and accepts requests on port 6400. Somehow, Postie messages are being redirected from the standard SMTP port of 25 to port 6400. I tried multiple email clients, creating a VBScript program that sends using the CDO.message object, and telneting into the server. None of the other methods of sending an email are effected. It must be in the specific API calls Postie uses.

After pounding my head upon the keyboard (for way too long), I found a way to disable the !@#$% info-aps on the client PC. In the file 'services' (found in the 'C:\Windows' directory on Win98 or 'C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\' on WindowsXP), simply comment out the line 'info-aps 6400/tcp' by adding '# ' in front of it.

If using Crystal Reports with an info-aps server, you can use WinBatch code to locate the services file, comment out the info-aps line, send a message via Postie, and then uncomment the line. No reboot is required after modifying the services file so this workaround is possible.

Bill Meek