In a recent report I needed to place 54 formula fields on the layout in 3 columns of 18 fields each. I selected the first 18 fields in the field explorer and clicked in the upper left corner of the section. Crystal then put five fields across until it hit the right margin, and then it wrapped the rest to the second line, then the third line until it had put all 18 fields onto the report.  I then had to drag them into a column layout manually.

When I went to do the second column I dragged the fields to where the second column would go.  Again CR went from where I clicked to the right edge and wrapped to add additional rows.  But, what surprised me was that the wrapped rows didn’t go all the way back to the left edge.  They stopped at the left end of my first field (where I had clicked).   That gave me an idea.   I hit undo and this time dragged the same 18 fields to the upper right corner of the section.  Now Crystal could only fit one field before wrapping.  So I got a perfectly left aligned, evenly spaced column with 18 rows and 1 field in each row – without having to do anything but slide the entire column into position.

So I opened up v8.5 (wondering how long this behavior has existed) and found that v8.5 did the exact same thing.  Just goes to show that I learn new things all the time.