Formatting Individual Chart Objects
The Chart Options dialog box you saw in the previous section applied to the chart as a whole. There are more Chart Options dialog boxes available for individual objects within the chart. For example, you can set the formatting for a certain group in a bar chart, change the fonts for individual axes, etc. This gives you another level of customization that goes even deeper than the previous Chart Options dialog box.
The way to access the Chart Options dialog box for individual report objects is to click on the chart object twice to give it the focus. The first time you click it, the outside edges of the chart are highlighted to show that you selected the chart. Now that the chart has focus, you have to click on the individual chart object to give it the focus. You can only select individual chart objects after selecting the chart object on the first click. It’s almost like you are “drilling-down” into the chart to get to the individual objects. After one of the objects is selected, you can right-click on it to get the pop-up menu and select the Chart Options menu option.
Having so many ways to format a chart can be a blessing and a curse. Obviously, you want to have many options so that you can a lot of ways to customize a chart. Hence, this is a good thing. But the problem with having so many options is that it is tough to figure out everything you can do. There are too many places to look, and if you do find the property you want to change, you might not remember how you got there in the first place. For example, assume you have a chart where the values on the Y-Axis have a large span. You want to change the Y-Axis to a logarithmic scale so that the small values are easier to plot. If you open the Chart Expert dialog box and look at the Axes tab, you’ll see options for changing the Min and Max properties and how many divisions there are, but nothing about using a logarithmic scale. You then go to the Chart Options dialog box and see that you can change the data type of the scale as well as setting dual axes. There are still no options for a logarithmic scale. At this point, you are getting frustrated and you search the help file. Unfortunately, the help file is no help because it doesn’t mention logarithmic scales at all. You might come to the conclusion that although logarithmic scales are a popular charting option, it isn’t possible with Crystal Reports. This would be a wrong conclusion because if you right-click on the y-axis chart object and select the menu option Data (Y) Axis Option, on the dialog box that opens there is a Scales tab that lets you display a logarithmic scale. Whew! It wasn’t easy to find, but sure enough it is there.
All in all, you can do powerful customization of charts in your report, but finding where to do it can be the biggest challenge. If you are going to be doing a lot of advanced chart formatting, you would be better off by clicking on every individual chart object and becoming familiar with all the minute changes you can make to it. Crystal Reports gives you a powerful array of chart formatting options but you have to be familiar with them to take advantage of them.
