Welcome to Crystal Reports Books online! This members-only section of the website gives you exclusive access to all my Crystal Reports books. Read them at your leisure online.<\/p>\n
I encourage you to post questions or comments throughout the book. Ask questions if you don’t understand something, or make suggestions for new content. I’ll modify the content based upon your feedback to ensure that this is the best online resource for learning Crystal Reports!<\/p>\n
Click on the following books to see their table of contents and pick the sections you want to read!<\/p>\n
This lesson walks you through the steps of creating a new report. You will see how easy it is to use the Report Creation Wizard to make a simple report. When you are finished, you will have created and printed out a report that shows employee names.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s quite possible that one of the most important parts of learning how to use Crystal Reports is understanding how Crystal Reports reads data and processes formulas while building a report. Understanding the two-pass report processing model will help you make proper design decisions and avoid problems later.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n
This tutorial demonstrates various formatting properties of the text object. Over the next few pages, you\u2019ll add text objects to the Sandbox.rpt report and see how different formatting options affect the output.<\/p>\n
Learn the techniques for changing the formatting properties of report objects.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n
To practice working with groups, let\u2019s modify the Employee List report created earlier. That report listed each employee on a separate line. We are going to modify the report so that it first groups by the region and then by the city.<\/p>\n
Crystal Reports has an excellent sample report that demonstrates how to create a grouping report using the specified order option. The report Group By Intervals.rpt is a sales report that shows total sales from the prior year for each customer. Each customer is broken down into three categories based on their sales volume: Less than $10,000, $10,000 to $25,000, and Greater than $25,000. Within each category the records are sorted by the Customer Name field. We\u2019re going to see how this report works by creating the same report from scratch.<\/p>\n
This tutorial walks you through the process of toggling the detail data on and off so that it can be drilled down into.<\/p>\n
This tutorial walks you through the process of creating summary fields that are displayed in the Group Footer. You will build a sales report that lists the number of purchases they had, their total sales and their average sales.<\/p>\n
This video walks you through the steps of adding summary fields to your reports.<\/p>\n
Using a formula to replace the running total field probably sounds like a lot of work. But you\u2019ll see that it\u2019s really quite simple once you do it a couple times.<\/p>\n
Running totals are much more powerful when you build them using formulas. In this video you see how easy it is to use formulas to build more flexible running total calculations.<\/p>\n
Before getting into the tutorials, we first need to build the base report that is used in the next two tutorials. This will be used for demonstrating how to modify an existing report so that it can handle dynamic groups.<\/p>\n
In this tutorial we will base the groups on formulas. We will fix the previous report so that it shows either both groups or only one group. This gives the user the ability to choose how the type of report they want to see.<\/p>\n
When creating a group, you have to specify the order to sort the data in (the default is ascending order). To make a report more flexible, you can let the user choose how to sort the report. Crystal Reports allows dynamic sorting by letting you specify a formula for the group sorting order.<\/p>\n
This video shows you how to let the user decide the way the report is sorted by entering their choice using a parameter and integrating it into a custom formula.<\/p>\n
When grouping data, it is common to repeat the group header section at the top of each group. This can include printing the group name and column headers. While this is very helpful, there are times when this makes things tricky because you don\u2019t always want the group header fields printed every time.<\/p>\n
Hierarchical groups give you the option to customize the indentation level of each child record. This tutorial shows a tree-view structure illustrating the relationship between the parent and child records.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n
In this tutorial, we set a filter on two fields: Country and Last Year\u2019s Sales. For Country, we want to select a specific set of countries to print (Canada, England, and USA). For the Last Years Sales field, we only want to see records with a sales amount over $25,000.<\/p>\n
See what wildcards are available in the record selection formula and examples of how to use them.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s modify the previous report so that it shows the details for all countries that had last year total sales greater than $100,000. This requires deleting the two previous fields from the record selection and summing the total of last year\u2019s sales.<\/p>\n
Most reports use grouping with a simple data field. But groups can be much more dynamic by basing them on a formula. In this video we combine a formula with a parameter so that the user chooses how the report data is grouped.<\/p>\n
The Specified Order option lets you pre-set the order the groups are printed on your report. We walk through an example of how to use the Specified Order option and customize the group names.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s do a tutorial illustrating what we\u2019ve learned so far about creating parameters. We\u2019ll create a parameter that lets the user specify which country to print. We\u2019ll populate the list by importing all the records from the database. Secondly, we want to practice creating a record selection formula that is more complicated than what can be created using the Select Expert. We will give the user the option of printing just the specified country or printing all countries by selecting \u201cALL\u201d from the drop-down list.<\/p>\n
The benefit to setting parameter options is that they give the user a more robust user interface for selecting parameter values. Let\u2019s modify the report we created in the previous tutorial so that rather than just selecting a single Customer to print, the user can select multiple customers.<\/p>\n
In this video, we take look at how to take a parameter\u2019s list of values and print it in the report header.<\/p>\n
Build your own custom interfaces for your reports using a Visual Studio .NET application. This video shows you how to modify the parameters during runtime. You also see how to view parameter names during debug and set parameter values for subreports as well.<\/p>\n
This report will now let the user print the report for one or more customers and the user will narrow down the list of customers to pick from by first picking the Country. Once they pick the Country, then only the customers located in that country will be displayed.<\/p>\n
There will be times when your report needs to display records that meet ANY of the conditions. If only one of the two conditions is met, then the record should still be printed. To do this, you have to use the OR operator to join the conditions.<\/p>\n
When using the Select Expert for filtering report records, it forces the user to either enter a single value to filter on or pick from a list of values. The problem with this is that sometimes the user will want to print every record in the data source but they can\u2019t because the selection formula doesn\u2019t account for this. You need some way to let the user specify that they want to print all the records when the need arises.<\/p>\n
In an effort to make Crystal Reports accessible for all people regardless of disability or impairment, the Enter Values dialog box is fully customizable. This enables you to make it easier for all your users to enter parameter values for a report.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n
Let\u2019s create a \u201cGreen Bar\u201d report that simulates the paper style that was used to be common in business reports printed on wide paper. Every other line was shaded in a light green color. This made it easy for the reader to scan across a long line of data and not lose track of which row they were reading. We\u2019ll use conditional formatting to simulate the green bar paper.<\/p>\n
This is part 1 of a 3 part video. In this video, you see how to print the contents of an array on a report. You print all the contents on one line, or break each element onto a separate line.<\/p>\n
This is part 2 of a 3 part video. In this video, you see how to only print unique values in a set of data. Thus, you are preventing duplicate data from printing. It uses an array to track the data that has already been printed. Before a new element is printed, a formula first checks to make sure it isn\u2019t already in the array. Only then will a new item be added.<\/p>\n
You see how to use a subreport to populate an array with data and the array is then printed on the main report. The subreport is hidden so that the user never sees the how the calculations are derived behind the scenes.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s practice converting a formula using the formula extractor. As an added bonus, we\u2019re going to convert a formula that breaks some of the rules of custom functions and see how to handle it.<\/p>\n
Displaying checkboxes on a report presents a new challenge. Checkboxes represent when a Boolean value is either true or false. But Crystal Reports doesn\u2019t have a way to print checkboxes. Displaying Boolean values as a checkbox requires a little more creativity. You have to trick Crystal Reports into printing checkboxes by switching to the Wingdings font.<\/p>\n
This video walks you through each step of printing checkboxes on your report.<\/p>\n
A common problem with printing addresses is that not every line is always used. Every address has a line allocated for the street address, but some addresses need a second line for other miscellaneous information.<\/p>\n
If you can use sections to suppress blank lines, it makes sense that you can use sections to do the opposite: add optional information. By adding an additional section and only showing it when necessary, the report keeps a consistent look.<\/p>\n
Individual report objects have a Suppress If Duplicated property which suppresses the object if its data is the same as the previous record. This prevents the report from duplicating the same information multiple times. But sections don\u2019t have this property because Crystal Reports would have to analyze every field within the report section to make this decision. But you can write your own formula to do this and only base it on the fields that are important.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s see how easy it is to create report alerts by walking through a simple tutorial. This example uses a report that prints sales by product and also shows which country the purchase was made in.<\/p>\n
Crystal Reports comes with an excellent example of a report that not only uses report alerts, but combines it with report parameters. This example links together parameters with report alerts with the alert message. We\u2019ll walk through it to see how it works.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n
Before we practice using subreports, let\u2019s first build the main report. This is going to be the foundation for all the tutorials throughout the subreport tutorials.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s start working with subreports by creating a subreport that links to the main report using a data field. We are going to take the Customer Sales Report we created in the previous tutorial and list the customer credits on it. We\u2019ll link the two reports together using the Customer Credit ID field which is found in both tables.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s create an unlinked subreport that displays the company address in the report header. You might be tempted to think that it is easier to just type in the company address manually rather than going through the effort of adding a subreport. But there are benefits to using a subreport here.<\/p>\n
We know that subreports are saved within the definition of the main report. So we need to save it independently of the main report.<\/p>\n
To illustrate how to use shared variables, let\u2019s modify the example report shown earlier that lists the customer sales and credits issued to the customer.<\/p>\n
Linking a subreport with a data field is the most common way of associating subreports with the main report. This video walks you through the steps for performing this process.<\/p>\n
There are a variety of ways to link a subreport to a main report. Linking with formulas gives you more flexibility for connecting your subreport to the main report. This video walks you through the steps of creating a formula and using it to link to the main report.<\/p>\n
There is a way to trick Crystal Reports into hiding the subreport but still perform its calculations. The key is that even though you can\u2019t suppress the subreport object, you can suppress the sections within the subreport.<\/p>\n
In this tutorial, we will examine the first two rules of sub reports mentioned earlier and demonstrate why each subreport should be put in its own section.<\/p>\n
One thing you might not have noticed in the previous report is that there is actually a problem with it. The subreport doesn\u2019t reset the shared variable back to zero. Let\u2019s fix this right away so that all customers have the correct totals.<\/p>\n
Another problem that you\u2019ll eventually encounter with subreports is when they don\u2019t have any data but they still print. You\u2019ll see the column headers but no detail records. In fact, you can see this in the previous tutorial. The column headers for the credit report are there, but no data is displayed. This makes for an unprofessional looking report. Correcting this requires making two changes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n
Let\u2019s take a report that uses groups and print a bar chart in the page header that summarizes each group\u2019s value. This gives the user a high-level overview of how each group compares to the other groups.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s look at how to customize an individual group chart by walking through a tutorial on it. we will place a gauge chart in the Group Header and then modify an individual chart for only one of the groups. This demonstrates how one group can have formatting that is unique from the other charts.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n
LLet\u2019s create a simple cross-tab report to see the basic steps. We\u2019ll create an annual sales report for customers.<\/p>\n
We are going to explore how groups work by modifying the report from the previous tutorial. We are going to add grouping to both the rows and columns.<\/p>\n
In a large cross-tab report, it can sometimes be difficult to spot important information among the many pages of data. In this circumstance, it helps to customize the look of the individual fields within the cross-tab.<\/p>\n
Formulas can also be used to customize the summary data that the cross-tab report is based on. For example, a formula can be used to dynamically change the value that gets summarized or it can change the text that is displayed within the cross-tab.<\/p>\n
Rather than formatting the cross-tab object based upon the data within the report, you can use parameters to let the reader choose how to customize the cross-tab.<\/p>\n
Customize the look of each row by using formulas that differentiate each row.<\/p>\n
We are just going to focus on how to copy the cross-tab object into arrays. Since there are so many things you can do with these arrays, I\u2019ll leave it up to you to customize it as your needs dictate.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n
Let\u2019s walk through two tutorials of how to add a map to a new report. You\u2019ll see that you can quickly create a map in just a few simple steps. We are going to create a map that shows Last Year Sales value for each country.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s get a little fancy and create a map type that plots multiple values: the pie chart. We learned earlier that the pie chart and bar chart types are only available when the Data tab has different fields for Geographic Area and On Change Of. By using a third data field, we can plot values against a category. Let\u2019s see how this works by mapping the total sales by city against multiple product types.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Information is power. In today\u2019s world, where we have computers that are as powerful as yesterday\u2019s supercomputers, there is a lot of information at our disposal. Being able to convert all this information into useful data is key for many businesses. There are many products available to make this possible, and Crystal Reports is by […]<\/p>\n
What\u2019s New in Crystal Reports XI Crystal Reports XI is the eleventh release of this popular reporting tool. The \u201cXI\u201d is the Roman numeral 11 as well as an abbreviation for Xtreme Intelligence (playing on the business intelligence theme). Crystal Reports XI has exciting new functionality that goes far beyond the previous versions of Crystal […]<\/p>\n
Getting to know Crystal Reports After opening Crystal Reports, you are presented with the Start Page. The start page is brand new for version XI. The goal is to make it easy to either open the most recent reports you have been working on or find out the latest news and updates about Crystal Reports. […]<\/p>\n
The Report Designer The Report Designer lets you design reports by adding report objects, formatting the report layout, creating groups, etc. It\u2019s where you spend the majority of your time when using Crystal Reports. If you\u2019ve used previous versions of Crystal Reports then you are very familiar with the designer. Figure 1-2. The report design […]<\/p>\n
Tutorial 1-1. Printing Your First Report This lesson walks you through the steps of creating a new report. You will see how easy it is to use the Report Creation Wizard to make a simple report. When you are finished, you will have created and printed out a report that shows employee names. Open Crystal […]<\/p>\n
Getting to Know the Report Designer The Report Designer is the area where you create reporting magic. With it, you design new reports, modify existing reports, write formulas, preview reports and print them out. It gives you all the tools necessary for designing hundreds of reports. Figure 1-4 shows the designer and its various windows. […]<\/p>\n
Managing the Toolbars The toolbars are located directly below the menu options listed along the top of the designer. The toolbars make it easy to access the different designer features by the simple click on the mouse. Most buttons either perform an action or make a change to the currently selected report object. Some of […]<\/p>\n
Dockable Windows When you first install Crystal Reports, there are three dockable windows displayed in the Report Designer: the Workbench, the Report Explorer, and the Field Explorer. Each window is located along the right side of the designer. If you want to personalize your workspace, you can move them to another location within the designer. […]<\/p>\n
The Workbench Do you work with so many reports that it\u2019s hard to keep track of all of them or even remember for whom or which department they were created for? The Workbench, located on the top right portion of the designer, makes it easy to organize and categorize a large number of reports. Within […]<\/p>\n
The Report Explorer The Report Explorer shows a snapshot of every report object on the report. This lets you browse through all the report objects in a hierarchical tree structure and look at each section and see every object within that section. By clicking on the + or \u2013 next to the section name you […]<\/p>\n
The Field Explorer The Field Explorer gives you a list of all the available database fields, formulas, parameters, summary fields and special fields. The Field Explorer serves two purposes. First is that you can see and edit the different fields on the report. For example, the Database Fields category shows you which fields are part […]<\/p>\n
The Design Tab If creating reports were an art, the Design tab would be your canvas. It\u2019s where you place the report objects, change colors or fonts, and set the layout of the report. The details of using the Design tab to create reports are the covered throughout this whole book. For now we will […]<\/p>\n
Understanding the Report Wizards The report wizards make it easy to create most types of reports. By selecting your data source and clicking on a few buttons, you can quickly create new reports. Depending upon your needs, creating reports can be a simple or complicated process. For example, it is very easy to print mailing […]<\/p>\n
Using the Wizard\u2019s Dialog Boxes Each report wizard uses a combination of different dialog boxes to question you about how to build your report. Each wizard presents a slightly different combination of these dialog boxes. This section describes how to use each dialog box and explains any aspects of it that may not be obvious. […]<\/p>\n
Two-Pass Report Processing Model It\u2019s quite possible that one of the most important parts of learning how to use Crystal Reports is understanding how Crystal Reports reads data and processes formulas while building a report. This is called the two-part report processing model and it is the reason why you can and can\u2019t do certain […]<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n
Learning the Report Designer Many people like to spend their weekends fiddling around their home doing small projects to keep their place fixed up. But before starting any new project, you have to make sure you are familiar with the tools you are going to use on the project. For example, if you just got […]<\/p>\n
Setting the Layout Options The Layout tab (see Figure 2-1) specifies the default properties for both the report designer and the report preview. For example, it lets you set how the designer looks, change the preview window, and display field information. The options within the Layout tab are divided into four different categories based upon […]<\/p>\n
Setting the Default Format Options After adding fields to a report, you frequently have to format each one to the proper font, alignment, format, etc. If you need to format report objects a particular way for multiple reports, you can set the default properties that are applied to each field. This saves you work because […]<\/p>\n
Setting Report Options After setting the options for customizing the report design experience, the next step is customizing the settings for an individual report. There are different options that affect a report\u2019s behavior and how it is printed. These options are based upon how the report is to be used. Page and Printer Options The […]<\/p>\n
Designing Reports The best way to become familiar with how to design reports is to start with the basics. Once you understand how the designer and the individual report objects work, you\u2019ll be ready to move on to advanced topics of report design (and finally start doing something fun!) The default view of the Design […]<\/p>\n
Adding Report Objects The majority of your time spent designing reports is spent working with the report objects. Crystal Reports gives you many types of objects for designing reports. Learning how each works is critical to being a proficient report writer. This section covers most of the available report objects (the more complex ones have […]<\/p>\n
Tutorial 2-1. Formatting Text Objects This tutorial demonstrates various formatting properties of the text object. Over the next few pages, you\u2019ll add text objects to the Sandbox.rpt report and see how different formatting options affect the output. Add a text object to the report by right-clicking anywhere on the report and selecting Insert Text Object. […]<\/p>\n
Tutorial 2-2. Applying Multiple Formatting Properties Add a new text object anywhere on the report and make it tall enough to show a few lines of text. But don\u2019t make it too long. Enter some text to fill up the text object. Notice how the cursor automatically moves to the next line when it gets […]<\/p>\n
Fields that Can Grow When working with database fields, it\u2019s common to show fields that display a large amount of data. For example, an inventory table can have a Description field that stores a lot of data. Depending upon the inventory item, some descriptions will be short and other will be long. When you add […]<\/p>\n
Formatting Strings The tutorials earlier in the chapter showed you different ways to format a text object. But it didn\u2019t discuss every formatting option available. The Format Editor has many more options for modifying the way string based report objects appear. The different formatting options are available for textbox objects as well as formulas, report […]<\/p>\n