A simpler approach to address blocks

Thursday 14 March 2019 @ 9:33 pm

One of my favorite parts of writing this blog is when people read a post and then send me an alternate approach that teaches me something new.  Like today.

Last month I shared a formula for creating an address block that will automatically remove blank lines. Today one of my readers showed me how he does this with a text object. He uses a formatting property called “Suppress Embedded Field Blank Lines”.  I had never seen this option before so I quickly checked my version of Crystal. There it was in the formatting properties of text objects (not fields). I thought I might have missed this because it was a recent feature, so I started working backwards through the different Crystal versions to see when it appeared. I stopped when I found it in CRv8.5 which is nearly 20 years old. So much for missing a recent feature.

To use this feature you add a blank text object to your report. You then ’embed’ fields by dragging each field over the text until you see a hash mark. This indicates where the field will be embedded in the text, even in the middle of a sentence.  When the hash mark is in the right spot, you release the field and it becomes embedded into the text object at that point.

To create an address block you would add all the address fields into a text object and hit <Enter> between each one so that each field is on it’s own line. At first, any empty fields will create a blank line in the block. But if you go into Format > Text> [common tab], and check the property mentioned above, these blank lines go away automatically.

This may not work in every situation, but it is much simpler then the formula approach I posted last month.  And thanks to Duane Fenner, an Accounting Support Specialist at LTi Technology Solutions for sharing this with me.









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