Every version of Crystal Reports in the past 20 years comes with a neat little label wizard that allows you to automatically set up about 30 common Avery label sizes. But there are a few things you need to know to avoid problems.

Tip #1) A report created using the label wizard can’t be changed to a regular report, and a regular report can’t have one of the label sizes automatically applied. You have to decide to use the label wizard when you first create the report. The wizard is found under the menu options “File > New > Mailing Label Wizard”.

Tip #2) The wizard lets you pick the fields you want, but it will put each field you select on its own line. So, if you create an address label and add the fields City-State-Zip, the wizard will put those fields on 3 separate lines. I add only the first field of each line while I am in the wizard. Then when I preview the report I can add the other fields, or write a formula to combine all of the fields that you need.

Tip #3) This label wizard always puts the label fields on subsections of the details band. If you want to print one label per group, don’t try to move the fields to group headers or you will make lots of unnecessary work. Instead you can make the detail labels appear as if they are at the group level by only printing the first detail label of each group.

To do this you:

• Add the group to the report
• Suppress both the Group Header and the Group Footer.
• Create a running total field that counts the records in each group(reset ‘on change of group’).
• Suppress the Detail sections or the Detail parent section with a condition that says:

{#running total} > 1

Only the first record (label) of each group will print. This allows you to use the wizard to get the layout automatically, but still print one record per group.

Last month I wrote about a difficult time I had installing Crystal Reports. One of my complaints was that if the install fails, you have to start over – including waiting 5-7 minutes while the setup ‘unpacks’ all the files. It seems like there should be a way to keep the files unpacked when an install has to be repeated.

Well SAP doesn’t provide an official way to do that but one of my readers (who apparently does lots of CR installs) shared his method. Here are his steps:

1. Run the install .exe.

2. Wait until everything has been unpacked. If you aren’t sure, wait until it asks for the license key. Then go to this folder, substituting your user name in the path:

C:\users\<username>\AppData\Local\Temp

Look for a folder in Temp that starts with “RARSFX”.

NOTE: AppData is a hidden folder, so you’ll have to set Explorer to view hidden items.

3. If there’s more than one “RARSFX” folder, delete all of them except the most recent one. These are failed installs that didn’t get deleted correctly.

4. Copy the remaining folder somewhere else. You cannot cut and paste because the installer has those files open. You might want to give the folder copy a more meaningful name.

5. For subsequent installs, go to this new folder and run setup.exe.

So if you are troubleshooting a balky install, or if you have to install CR on several different workstations, the steps above will speed up the iterations. And, thanks to Dell Stinnett-Christy, a senior manager at Protiviti, for sharing this method.

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.

Whenever you drag a new database or formula field onto the details band, Crystal will add a column heading for you, automatically. This heading is just a text object but it will stay internally linked to that field. If you move the field horizontally, or change its width, the heading will adjust to match.  If you delete the field, the heading disappears as well.

This can sometimes present a challenge. For example, when you have formatted and aligned column headings and you need to replace the fields below them. When you delete the original fields the headings will also be deleted and then you have to recreate them and reformat them.  I was in this situation twice in the past few days. In one case I had to replace a group of tables with a SQL command, in the other I replaced a SQL command with a subreport. In both cases the database fields on the report had to be replaced. And as soon as I deleted the original fields I saw that the headings also went away. I didn’t want to recreate the headings to match the old ones, so I hit undo and did some experimenting.  I learned two things that allowed me to keep my original headings in place even after the original fields are deleted:

1. If you copy the headings and paste a second copy of them somewhere else on the report, Crystal will only delete one set.
2. If the new headings are in a separate section Crystal will delete the headings in the higher section.

So my new approach for this scenario is to:

• Split the section that contains the headings to create a new temporary subsection.
• Drag the new subsection to be above the original section.
• Copy the headings and paste the copies into the new blank section.
• Insert the new fields into the new subsection (so they won’t create new headings)
• Use the format painter to format the new fields based on the format of the originals.
• Use the menu (format > make same size) to size the new fields to match the originals.
• Delete the original fields, which should delete the new headings in the higher section.
• Move the new fields to the original section and align them with the original headings.
• Delete the temporary subsection.

This process adds a few extra steps, but it keeps your original headings exactly as they were and allows the new fields to look exactly like the ones that they replaced.

Last month I wrote an article about suppressing the page header on the last page when there are no details. This is handy if your last page is a subreport, a chart or a cross-tab. After my newsletter went out one of my readers shared her approach to the same problem. She uses the group header of a dummy group, and sets it to “repeat” on each page.

Any time you have a Group Header you can set it to repeat on each page. One feature of  a repeating GH is that it won’t appear on the last page of a group, unless that page has at least one detail record.  I wrote about that behavior in another article long ago.  So the only trick is to create a primary group that includes every record in the report. Then you set this group header to repeat on each page and it behaves just like a page header, with the exception of not printing on the last page.

So how do you create a group that includes all the records in the report? You group on a value that doesn’t change.  If you have a DB field like “company” that doesn’t change you can use it.  But you can always create a formula that isn’t tied to any data fields.  My favorite dummy group formula is:

WhileReadingRecords;
"All"

The word “All” can be any value. Just keep in mind it will appear as the overall node of the group tree so you might want it to make some sense. The WhileReadingRecords function allows the report to see this static value as a recurring value, which makes it eligible for grouping.

Once you create the formula you use it as Group 1 in the report and then go into Group Options and check “Repeat Group Header on each new page”.  If you put your column headings in this Group Header they will appear on every page, but won’t appear on the last page (unless there are details printing on that page).

And thanks to Tina Nordyke, the DBA for Advocates for Basic Legal Equality, Inc for suggesting this method.

This week I worked with two different customers, helping them locate data buried in a large system with hundreds of tables. In both cases I had to use the table filter method to help me find the correct tables. For instance, when we needed to find the vendors table we looked first in the V section of the table list. However, in the system we were using all of the tables names had a 2 character prefixes for a dozen or more different modules. It wasn’t clear which module might contain this table. So I added a filter to the list of table names shown in the Database Expert. This way only table names that contain VEND somewhere in the name would be displayed. It made it easy to spot the correct table.
To add a filter to the table list you need to go into File > Options > (Database Tab).

In the middle section you will see two boxes on the right, and the top one is for table filters. It is labeled [Table Name LIKE:]

In this box you enter the characters you are looking for with a percent sign before the characters and/or after the characters. This percent sign is a wild card symbol. So since we only wanted to see tables that contained VEND anywhere in the name we put in a filter like this:

%VEND%

If I wanted all tables that have TMP on the end I could enter a filter with only one wildcard, like this:

%TMP

The only downside I have seen when using these filters, is that it is easy to forget about the filters. It then takes a bit to figure out why the table list is missing or incomplete. So don’t forget to take the filter out when you are done.

If you are trying to move cross-tab numbers into a spreadsheet, there is a short cut. You can simply copy and paste the entire cross-tab into your spreadsheet. Right-click in the upper left (empty) cell of the cross-tab and select “copy”.  Then switch to the spreadsheet and right-click in a cell and select “paste”. The cross-tab numbers should appear in the spreadsheet.

The only limitation is that the cross-tab has to fit on one page in Crystal. Fortunately, all recent versions of Crystal allow the page to be as large as needed. Go into “File > Page Setup” and check the option called:

“Disassociate Formatting page size with Printer Paper size. “

Then set the height and width to whatever you need to accommodate your cross-tab.

If you have an older version of CR (before CR 2008) the option above is missing. Instead you can use a PDF virtual printer like Cute PDF, and set a custom paper size so you have enough room.

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.

If I want to remove the decimals of several fields at once you can use CTRL-click or a cursor lasso to select all the fields, then go to the toolbar and hit the “reduce decimals’ button. Each click will remove one decimal from all of the selected fields.

You can do something similar when you want to apply a formatting condition formula. For example, if you want to turn negative numbers red while leaving positive numbers black. The font color condition formula looks like this:

if currentfieldvalue < 0
then CrRed
else CrBlack

To apply this formula to one field you select that field and then select the menu items “Format > Field”. On the “Font” tab you click the condition formula button next to font color. It will usually look like the top one of these buttons:

Once inside you paste in the formula above and then click “Save and Close. The formula button should turn red and look like the middle button above. This means the condition has a formula. When you click OK the negative values for that field will turn red.

Note that the formula doesn’t refer to a specific field, but to the function “CurrentFieldValue”. This function is only available when you do condition formulas and refers to the value of the field you are formatting. The advantage is that the same logic can be used on any numeric field and the condition will be exactly the same, rather than each field having to have a different formula that mentions a specific field.

If you want to apply this formula to several fields at once you could select that group of fields and then select the menu items “Format > Objects”. Like above, you go to the “Font” tab, click the [x+2] and paste in the formula. When you click “Save and Close, then then click OK all of those objects should have that property.

One thing to look out for when you are formatting multiple fields at once is a purple condition button (bottom example in the picture above). This only appears when you try to format multiple fields at once. This tells you that some/all of these fields already have a condition and that not all of them are the same. If you click a purple condition button it will show you a blank formula. If you put in a new formula you will overwrite any existing logic and all of the selected fields will end up with the new condition.

I have written before about links that tap into indexes and how they can speed things up. Especially when you can hit ALL of the fields in the index.

This week I was troubleshooting a report that took 2 hours to run and found a similar case. The report was from a Sage/MAS accounting application. I saw a link between invoiceHistoryHeader and InvoiceHistoryDetails where it took 2 fields to make a unique match.  I checked the index tags for the primary key (red colored tabs) and and found that there were 3 fields in the details table primary index while the header table had only 2. Since we only had two of those fields to use for linking I wanted to make sure the link went from the details to the header, so that the link would completely hit the index. From the arrangement of the tables that appeared to be true, but when I hit “Auto Arrange” I could see that the join actually started with the header and went to the details.

Reversing the join allowed the report to complete in 7 minutes. Still slow, but a huge improvement over 2 hours.