I recently wrote about a post about controlling the color of multiple objects from one formula.   One of my newsletter readers took the idea and ran with it and designed a custom function for his repository:

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Just got the ‘Underground News’. The tip on creating formulas for set colors is fantastic – never occurred to me either. Opens up all kinds of possibilities – kind of CSS for Crystal Reports. So now I can

• Create a ‘suite’ of my company colors and apply them in my reports
• Create a Custom Function the argument  is a key assigned to each of my colors.
• Store this Custom Function in my Repository so I can use it in other reports

E.g.

1. Create a Report Custom Function called ‘MyCompanyColors’, with a single argument (I’ve used a number – in this case I would need a key to remind me which number stands for which color)

2. Build the Function so that it returns a colour for each argument

Function  (NumberVar col)
If col = 1 Then RGB(255,140,140) Else
If col = 2 Then RGB(168,255,190) Else
If col = 3 Then RGB(255,215,174) ...

3. Call my Custom Function from any Conditional Format expression, pass it the right key number, and get the right color.

If {Orders_Invoices_NoRenewals.LineItemTotal} < 5000
Then MyCompanyColors(1) Else
If {Orders_Invoices_NoRenewals.LineItemTotal} >= 5000
And {Orders_Invoices_NoRenewals.LineItemTotal} < 10000
Then MyCompanyColors(3)
Else  MyCompanyColors(2)

The beauty is that the report colors are now standardized and thus consistent across all reports, they can be applied easily, and if there ever is a change, one edit in one formula then ‘cascades’ down to everywhere the color has been used. Simple!

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I don’t have many customers who use a repository, but it is still a neat idea.  And you can implement a similar idea without the custom function and still have a fairly simple way of maintaining color consistency across reports.  So thanks to David White,  a Crystal Developer in the UK, for sharing his idea.