I always mention case sensitivity in my Crystal Reports classes. My normal comment is that CR formula comparisons are case sensitive with the exception of the selection formula, which is usually NOT case sensitive.  I even wrote about this here, last month.  So I was surprised last week in my Advanced class when our formulas ignored all case differences. I thought this might be a recent change so I went home and tested reports back to v8.5. None of the comparisons were case sensitive.

So I did a quick Google search and found a 10 year old forum thread discussing case sensitivity. One short comment in that thread explained the difference. And guess who wrote that comment and promptly forgot about it (Doh!).

So the answer is that there is a setting in File -> Report Options that tells CR if your SQL statements need to be case sensitive.  That setting also controls the case sensitivity of your Crystal formula comparisons.  This setting is saved with each report so you can have some reports that are case sensitive and others that are not. You can set the global default for this setting in File -> Options (Database Tab).  The File Options setting will set the default value for all NEW reports, but will not change the default value for existing reports.  If you need to change the value for existing reports you need to go to File -> Report Options for each report.