The “specified order” feature in Crystal is useful when you need to group on a field, but you don’t want the values in normal ascending or descending order. With specified order you can place some or all the values for a field into the exact order that you want them to appear. Specified order is available for groups, for the rows and columns of a cross-tab, and for the ‘on change of’ field in advanced charts. You can even use it if you are grouping on a formula field.

But what happens if you do specified order grouping on a formula field, and then change that formula to be a different data type? You will get a formula error – but not in the formula you created. It will be in the internal formula that creates the specified order, and will look like this:

If this happens to you just click [Save and Close]. Then go back into the Group Expert and change the group to Ascending order. This should clear the error and you can then go back and set up specified order for the new formula, if needed.