>I'm not trying to defend Microsoft in this. I'm not sure they need defending. There would inevitably be some page limit to reports, in this case it's 9,999.

Why is it inevitable that there should be a page limit to reports. I might expect a limit to the page number I could print, even then I would expect that to be the largest integer. There might be an argument for limiting the number of pages to the maximum number of records, but then you can't guarantee a single page per report. Surely the only limit should be the resources available for storage of the report prior to printing, rather than some arbitrary figure.