If you have ever done a page break or a suppress condition in Crystal Reports, you have been in the Section Expert. This is where you can change any of the formatting properties of the sections. And if you have ever split a section into subsections, you know that each subsectioin has their own set of properties in the Section Expert.

But users don’t always notice that whenever you split a section into subsections, the parent section still exists in the Section Expert. So when you split the Details section in to Details A and Details B, there is still an item called Details in the list of sections, and this ‘parent’ section has properties that apply to all of the subsections at once. For example:

1. If you check “Keep Together” in the parent section Crystal will try to keep all the subsections together on a page, and if they won’t fit will move them ALL to a new page.
2. If you put a suppress condition in the parent section it will suppress ALL of the subsections at once.
3. If you check “New Page After” in the parent section it will generate a page break after the last detail subsection, even if you rearrange the details.

You might find that this helps simplify formatting sections with subsections.