There are three ways to move/size individual objects in Crystal Reports.

1) Dragging with the mouse. To move an object you drag the object by its middle. To size the object you drag the sizing handles on the sides or corners.

2) Using the “Size and Position” property available through the right-click menu. You can enter or change the coordinates for the position of the upper left corner as well as the height and width.

3) This one is lesser known. You can click on an object and move it by holding down the CTRL key and clicking one of the four arrow keys. What you are moving is the upper left corner, but since the size of the object isn’t changing you are really moving the whole object. To size the object you hold the SHIFT key instead and use the same four arrows. This moves the lower right corner of the object without moving the upper left corner, thus changing the size.

But there are two limitations to be aware of when using this technque:

1) If the object’s right side or bottom has touched a guideline and ‘attached’ itself, the SHIFT-Arrow will no longer change the object’s size. You can, however, still move the object with the CTRL-Arrow.

2) If you select more than one object, AND you are in preview mode, AND you hold down the arrow key to move the objects continuously, then Crystal Reports will almost always crash. Thanks to Gordon Portanier of Crystalize in Canada for pointing this latest behavior out.

If you want to use the Euro symbol in your reports then you need to do two things.

1) Know the code for the symbol
2)Use a font that includes that symbol.

The code for the Euro symbol in most standard fonts is Alt-0128. Hold your “ALT” key and type the numbers 0128 on your keyboard’s numeric keypad. The Euro symbol should appear. If another symbol appears you may have to change the font for that character to one that has the Euro symbol (like Arial or Times New Roman).

For more about using currency symbols in reports you can read this newsletter article.

For more about the Euro symbol and fonts you can read Microsoft’s kb article.

I have used Crystal Reports with Xbase (Dbase/Foxpro/Clipper) files for years, primarily with Goldmine. Goldmine is a contact manager and stores files in DBF format. With just about every Crystal upgrade I have had to change the way I make the connection to the DBF files. So I was surprised a few months back when CR 2008 (version 12) cleanly ran all of my internal reports with no changes. It Continue Reading »
CR 2008 Service Pack 0 breaks Xbase Connector

I was recently asked to solve another problem with a cascading parameter. Apparently two fields in the cascade had the same field name (but were from different tables). This isn’t unusual when you have several tables with fields named “Description” or “Code”. But in a cascade each level may need to create a separate parameter, and each parameter is named after the field that provides its data. So when CR finds a duplicate field name in the cascade it tries to create a duplicate parameter name and this generates an error. There is no visible option for renaming either parameter.

The solution Continue Reading »
Cascading parameters when two fields have the same name

This one is hard to understand or even describe without an example but here is the general description: A three-level cascading parameter will work fine as long as all of the values in level 2 are unique. However if any values in level 2 can be found in more than one top level group, then you will likely lose values in level 3. Like I said, an example is needed. Say you used the following 8 records to create a three-level cascade for Vendor, Category and Model:

Dell / Notebook / Model_A
Dell / Notebook / Model_B
Dell / Desktop / Model_1
Dell / Desktop / Model_2

Compaq / Notebook / Model_X
Compaq / Notebook / Model_Y
Compaq / Desktop / Model_8
Compaq / Desktop / Model_9

Continue Reading »
Three-level cascading parameter that duplicates/drops values

I was working with a customer the other day and was told that the company had implemented a Crystal Report standard that ALL reports would have the option “Convert Database Null Values to Default” checked. I almost never check that as a global default in a report. One of the main reasons has to do with WHEN that conversion takes place. It happens after the query has been run in the database but before Crystal reads in the records. That makes it very difficult to select null values. Consider a report using the Xtreme Customer table that lists all customers with Null postal codes. My selection formula is: Continue Reading »
Convert Nulls and Selecting Nulls

I doubt that many of you will ever run into this limit, but for those who need to manage large data sets: the Group Tree in versions 9 through 12 will simply stop at group number 65,500. The groups beyond that point will still appear in the report (both preview and print) but will not show up in the group tree.

The good news is that this limit is applied per node. So, if you have a single group level with 90K groups you will only see 2/3 of them in the group tree. But if you add a primary group that splits the list in half, then each node of the primary group can show up to 65K groups.

I was recently teaching a class using a new Vista laptop and Crystal Reports v10. When I got to the lesson on date parameters I started to show the class how to change the month or the year in the little pop-up calendar. What I got was something I had never seen before. Instead of scrolling through consecutive months or years I got a zoom out/zoom in interface. It would zoom out from a month view, to a year view, to a decade view and finally to a century view. Then I could zoom back in by selecting the correct decade, then a specific year in that decade, then a specific month and then the desired date. It was a nice little interface but I had never seen it before Continue Reading »
Mystery calendar for date parameters in v10 on Vista

There may be a bug in CR 2008 that fails to read previously available Custom UFL Functions. I have tried this on two separate PC’s that have multiple versions of CR installed side-by-side and get the same result. In CRv12 the node for Visual Basic user functions (u2lcom.dll) doesn’t show up in the function tree under “Additional Functions”. However on that same PC those functions do appear in all previous versions of Crystal. I am also checking in with some colleagues who (so far) are finding the same behavior.

If you get a different behavior please let me know. And if your reports rely heavily on UFL functions you may want to confirm that your functions work in CR2008 before you lock in on the upgrade.

One of my customers asked if there was a way to do this. There isn’t a way to do this directly, but I played around and found a way to control the visibility of vertical lines, horizontal lines and boxes. Below are the steps for controlling all lines and boxes located between the Page Header and Page Footer. However the method can be adapted for other locations. Continue Reading »
Suppressing vertical lines on a page, based on a condition.