Have you ever used the Highlighting Expert in Crystal Reports? Chances are your response is no, and you are wondering what it is. The Highlighting Expert is a button on the Experts Toolbar. The button looks like this: 
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The Highlighting Expert is also on the shortcut menu of the right-click. Once you choose this Expert, this dialog box opens: Read the rest of this entry »
Let’s suppose that a third party designed the report you need, but you have to modify it. Where to begin? Follow this checklist to give you, as the report modifier, answers that you may need to go forward. Read the rest of this entry »
Drill Down is one of the great features in Crystal Reports. You have to group the report and hide the Detail Section. Now only the Group Names (the Group Header) are showing with any Summary information in the Group Footer. Double clicking on a Group Name generates a separate tab and a sheet will be created on only that Group. Read the rest of this entry »
There are various ways you can distribute the reports you designed in Crystal Reports even if you aren’t using Crystal Reports Server or any other Enterprise Servers. Some of the ways are the old standby methods such as PDF and MSWord. These methods work fine, as they definitively meet the needs of the organizations report readers. Read the rest of this entry »
Did you know that in Crystal Reports you can design your own customized groups for your reports? All you need to do is to decide what the new groups will be called and what the rules or criteria are for the different groups. You are ready to go! Read the rest of this entry »
When you design your reports in Crystal Reports, Crystal Reports uses the database format for the database fields. It also uses the database fonts as I discussed in Setting Default Fonts in Crystal Reports. This, again, requires that you format these fields every time you want to use them in you report.
I recommend you take the time upfront to change these default settings in Crystal Report so that you won’t have to change the settings on each new report you create. Here’s how you change the default field settings in Crystal Reports: Read the rest of this entry »
In general, Crystal Reports users set up the default formatting to display the data in the way it is to be used most often. However, when it is necessary to be able to switch quickly to another format – right-clicking to format the field is usually the solution.
If the data field comes down to Crystal Reports with several decimal points, one solution would be to use the remove decimal places button on the tool formatting bar. That button actually rounds up on decimal place numbers greater than 5 and rounds down on decimal place numbers less than 5.
If that data is included in a formula, the Round function could be used on the number to be formatted. To give the report designer more control there are actually two functions for rounding numbers: Round and RoundUp. Each of these rounding functions have two sub-functions, which we will see below. Read the rest of this entry »
Tired of constantly formatting your fields in Crystal Reports? Frustrated because you have to do it for every report? Crystal Reports uses default fonts provided in the database and they are not usually what you would consider attractive for your report. You can change the default fonts so that when you design a new report, Crystal will use your preferred fonts in the new report. Read the rest of this entry »
In Xcelsius, the Object Browser is your new best friend. It stores and displays all of the components that are on the canvas and allows you to hide them and/or lock them into position. Xcelsius allows you to design a dashboard by placing components on the canvas. It adds exciting visualization to Excel data– trends, what-if, projections and much more.
What exactly is Conditional Formatting in Crystal Reports?
Conditional formatting, put simply, is formatting (e.g, font color, font style, etc.) applied to data that meets certain rules or conditions. For example, the person requesting the report would like the Total Sales field to have a green background if the amount is greater than $5000. Read the rest of this entry »
