As of March, Logicity 1.6 is available. Logicity is a combined viewer and scheduler. It now features CR 2008 compatibility. Logicity has a free version and a paid (supported) version.

As of July, DataLink Viewer 2008 is available.  DataLink Viewer now features CR 2008 compatibility

CR Chart 3.5 is now available.  CR Chart enhances the charting capabilities of Crystal Reports and is made by the folks who create the charting feature for Crystal Reports.  CR Chart 3.5 is CR 2008 compatible and has 30 new macro features to enhance your charts.

As of June Easy View 2.0 is available.  Easy view is a combined viewer and scheduler.  It now supports CRXI along wth several other improvements. It runs $39 for a single copy.

See my LINKS page for more info on these products.

Every once in a while I have found that Exporting from Crystal Reports to PDF doesn’t look as good as the printout. In those cases I might not use the Crystal built in Export function, but instead will use one of the free PDF printer drivers that are available. My current favorites are PDF Creator and Cute PDF.

These tools, once installed, behave like a new printer on your computer. You select this faux printer and print the report as you normally would. It converts the output of the report (or document or spreadsheet) into a PDF file. PDF Creator is open source and works with all Microsoft operating systems except for Vista. Cute PDF is free but is not open source. I use it currently on Vista.

To install Cute PDF you must download both the writer and the converter on the left of the page.

If any of you are considering migrating from a Crystal Reports/Business Objects based platform to the one provided by Actuate, you might find this link interesting. There are some comparative white papers there (lengthy registration required). I haven’t taken the time to request them yet so if anyone does and wants to provide some feedback that would be great.

I have had 3 customers (so far) who have called me to fix their Crystal Reports for PeachTree 2008. These are reports that worked fine under previous versions of PeachTree but ‘break’ when run against 2008. And in 2 of the 3 cases the customer had been assured by PeachTree sales that the upgrade would not affect custom reports. That might be true as long as you aren’t using any balances from the CHART table or the billing address from the Customer table.

All of the balance fields in the CHART table have been renamed although the number of fields and their order seems to be exactly the same. Also the CUSTOMER table has lost the billing address fields which have been moved to another table.

If you need help with custom reports for PeachTree 2008, or any other version, give me a call.

One of my most visited pages is my list of third party products and many of you are either using them or have tried them. In January three of these vendors released upgrades that you should be aware of: Continue Reading »
Recent upgrades available for popular third party utilities

SaberLogic of Wadsworth, OH has developed a new Crystal Reports viewer. It allows reports to be refreshed, scheduled, exported, printed and even sent out via Email. It is called Logicity and is compatible with all versions of Crystal from 8.5 through XI. They have released both a free version and a PRO ($45) version. The free version has most of the capabilities of the PRO version and doesn’t have any ads, SPAM or spyware.

The PRO version comes with installation support and adds features like user logging, and password protection for reports. A site license (for very large installs) is available for $4,500. If you decide to purchase Pro before the end of the year you can get a 10% discount by using my discount code, which is CRU (as in the Crystal Reports Underground).

If you decide to try it and find anything you like or don’t like, please let me know. And if you purchase the PRO version don’t forget to claim your discount.

Those of you who have worked with subreports know that you can pass a value from the subreport to the main report and back again. But have you ever needed to create a value in one report and use that value in a completely different report? Or maybe store a value from a monthly report to use in next month’s report? Here are 2 ways to accomplish this using 3rd Party dll files: Continue Reading »
Store a value today and use it in a different report tomorrow

Many of my customers use Crystal Reports to print checks. This can be a tricky endeavor, especially aligning the report output with the check stock.

One solution is to incorporate all of the check stock information into the report itself and then to print the check on “blank” security check stock paper. Printing the static lines, boxes and text is pretty straightforward but one part of the check keeps most people from ever trying this…the MICR characters, (Magnetic Ink Character Recognition). That is the Continue Reading »
Free MICR font (Turn blank security paper into check stock)

I have been testing out a handy little utility called Phrase Express for a few months and some colleagues just pointed out to me how this tool can be used with Crystal Reports. Phrase Express stores your commonly typed phrases. You can then paste them, on demand, into Email messages and other documents. I have been using it primarily to help with Email phrases that I type several times a day (common questions, links, etc) and it is great. It works with any Continue Reading »
Creating a formula library in Phrase Express

One of the most popular pages on my site is the LINKS page where I have a comprehensive list of third party utilities that are available for Crystal Reports. These include Viewers and Schedulers as well as tools that do Email, Bursting and host of other useful services. You can also request a short review of my favorite utilities and the tasks for which they are best suited.

This past week I ran into some issues I started using my Vista laptop. Not all of the utilities are are fully compatible with Vista. Some just need to have their compatibility settings adjusted to be run in XP mode. Some need to be run as Administrator. Some do not run at all. For example, currently PDF eXPLODE does not work on Vista (but they are working on it).

If you run into any compatibility issues with Vista and Crystal or a Crystal utility, I would love to hear about it.