Cross-tabs are special objects you can place in your Crystal Reports. If you know what a datasheet (spreadsheet or Access datasheet view) looks like, you know what a cross-tab looks like. It’s a cross tabulation created by rows and columns.

Often, a cross-tab is the meat of the report. It doesn’t have to be, but you can use it that way. People are using to seeing rows and columns, so this is often an appropriate way to display information.

Keep in mind, a cross-tab is not a spreadsheet—it’s database-driven. Thus, when you view it in design view, you’ll see the layout—rows and columns—but not the data. In the preview mode, you’ll see the rows and columns full of the data you requested. And the more records your Crystal Report returns, the larger the cross-tab will be.

Some facts:

• You cannot create a cross-tab without a summarized field.
• Cross-tabs can crunch tens of thousands of rows of data to produce a concise summary.
• Cross-tabs are read-only.
• You can use groupings (ascending, descending, and specified order) and formulas with cross-tabs.
• You save a cross-tab as a report and export it to Excel for further manipulation.
• You can format cross-tabs a variety of ways, including doing so via pre-formatted styles.
• All columns in a cross-tab must be the same width, unfortunately.
• You can pivot cross-tabs (swap the position of the rows and columns)