The Unofficial Guide to Learning Crystal ReportsĀ® Part I:
This course is designed to introduce you to the power of Crystal Reports, and
give you a solid grounding in the basics of report creation. It is designed for
students that are new to Crystal Reports but that have basic Windows experience.
The lessons are illustrated by exercises that use Xtreme.MDB, the sample
database that comes with Crystal. The course was designed by Ken Hamady, a
recognized expert in Crystal Reports. Ken is an independent trainer and
consultant and is not affiliated with Business Objects or SAP AG. Most of his
customers appreciate this independence. Crystal Reports is a registered
trademark of Business Objects and SAP AG. This course can be taught on
any
version.
This book is
available for
download (free).
Basics:
- Terminology
- Using the Standard Expert to get a first draft
- Working in Preview mode
- Saving and printing
- Understanding the 7 Sections
- Using Undo
- Customizing the design environment
- Guidelines and snap to grid
- Controlling the visibility of Sections
- Hiding vs. Suppressing
- Summary reports and Drill Down
- Adding Page breaks
- Reseting page numbers
- Splitting Sections
- The difference between Sorting and Grouping
- Adding, deleting and changing Sorts
- Adding, deleting and changing Groups
- The Group Name field
- How fields behave in headers and footers
- Uses for TopN
- Sorting Groups
- Selecting Top and Bottom Groups
- Challenges when using TopN
- Steps to adding a Chart
- The basic settings of a Chart
- Changing an existing Chart
- Types of Summary Operations
- Steps to add a Summary
- Changing a Summary
- Problems with Summary fields
- Uses of a Cross Tab
- Adding a Cross-Tab
- Changing a Cross-Tab
- Multiple row/column/summary Cross-Tabs
- Single dimension Cross-Tabs
- Cross-Tab placement
- Using the Select Expert
- Components of the rules
- Editing the Selection Formula directly
- Finding Null Values in your data
- Using Group Selection
- Problems with Group Selection
- Linking overview
- Table inflation
- Using the Visual Linking Expert
- Join Types in ODBC
- Adding and removing tables manually
- Adding a new formula
- Punctuation in formulas
- Operators in formulas
- Editing a formula
- Deleting a formula
- Math Functions: (Round(), Sum(), Count(), Average()
Minimum() Maximum()
- String Functions: Right(), Val(), ToText()
- Date Math and Date Functions: Year(), Month(), Day(), DayOfWeek() CurrentDate
- Date Range Functions: (MonthToDate, YearToDate, etc.)
- Null values in formulas: IsNull()
- If-Then-Else logic
- Concatenation
- Checking for one string within another
- Substring
- Value is between
- Value is one of
- Pasting "browsed" data into a formula
- Formatting fields by data type
- Adding borders to objects
- Formatting multiple fields
- Formatting sections
- Adding lines and boxes
- Adding special fields
- Overview
- Inserting a Text Object
- Editing and formatting a Text Object
- Adding fields to a Text Object