One of my customers asked if there was a way to do this. There isn’t a way to do this directly, but I played around and found a way to control the visibility of vertical lines, horizontal lines and boxes. Below are the steps for controlling all lines and boxes located between the Page Header and Page Footer. However the method can be adapted for other locations.

1) Create a new Page Header below the ones you have and set it to “Underlay”. Make it just big enough to reach the top of the page footer n preview, but be careful not to make it too big or it will generate errors and crash crystal.

2) Place a large empty text object into this section and set its background color to white. The text object should be deep enough to fill the new page header and wide enough to cover the lines and boxes that you want to control.

3) Place the opposite of your suppress condition in the suppress formula of this new section. When the new PH is suppressed the lines and boxes will be visible. When it is NOT suppressed it will cover the lines and boxes, making them invisible.

The funny thing is that this text object won’t hide any other text objects, field objects or pictures – just lines and boxes. That fact almost fooled me into giving up. But since these other objects can be suppressed with their own formulas there is no need to find a new way to suppress them. Lines and boxes don’t have their own suppression formula buttons.

If you have trouble managing the lines and boxes on a page, don’t forget that I can be ‘rented’ for as little as 15 minutes to help out. And if you like tips and tricks like this, don’t forget to check out my Expert Techniques materials.

(Update 9/6/2021 – Starting with CR 2016, lines and boxes have suppress condition properties. )