I have a report that runs fine in HTML but crashes when running in pdf. If I uncheck the 'Apply the filter to individual valuales in the data source', it runs.
What exactly does this check box do? I may be over thinking it but it doesn't make sense to me at the moment.
I suggest you open the report in report studio and see what is different in the generated sql when the box is checked vs. unchecked.
Checking that option (I believe) ensures the filter criteria shows up in the where clause of the SQL statement. Seems to me this would perform better than unchecking it where potentially local processing will take place to perform the filtering and with larger amounts of data being retrieved from the database.
There is a difference when filtering on measures to decide if your filter applies to the individual figure in the database vs. the aggregate figure on the report, but based on the phrase you noted I don't think this is what you're talking about.