|
|
Crystal Reports Basics: Highlighting Expert
This is based on the book, Crystal
Reports: A Beginner’s Guide. For more detail and explanation, plus
practice exercises, order the book here.
In the days of paper-based reports, the highlighter proved very useful
very fast. It took electronic reports quite a while to catch up. You can
now highlight text in Excel or Word.
Both Excel and Crystal Reports allow
logic-based highlighting. You can set Crystal Reports to change the font,
background colors, and borders per predetermined criteria. The
Highlighting Expert allows you to set those criteria. This allows you to
highlight whatever information is important to you.
For example, you may
want to highlight quality reports when tolerances are outside one
deviation from the limit. Or, you may want to highlight delinquent
accounts where new orders are pending, so you don’t extend even further
trade credit to a non-paying customer.
You can also use Conditional Formatting to accomplish similar things.
Accountants, project managers, and engineers use conditional formatting in
Excel to change, for example, text colors when a calculation gives an
undesired return. In the case of an accountant, a result may turn red to
indicate a deficit due to overexpenditure or underfunding.
For even more functionality, you can use third-party
programs, such as the ones available here.
Just be sure you don't carried away with highlighting and other formatting. Use
these tools sparingly, so that what's highlighted really is the exception. The
more you highlight on a given page, the more dilution you have in the effect of
the highlighting. That defeats the idea behind highlighting to begin with.For
all of your formatting, do it with specific goals in mind. Here are some to
consider:
- Present a clean but compelling appearance.
- Guide the reader's eye to what's important. That means very little
highlighting or bolding.
- Separate information or visually group it.
- Make the report consistent with other company literature. For example,
use company colors, company logo, and the official font (if there is one).
- Create a different flavor or appearance for each type of report. For
example, financial reports have a green border, sales reports have a salmon
border, production reports have a blue border, and so on.
- Show what has changed.
- Highlight problem areas.
Now, what about your own expertise? You'll need to develop that. The wizards and
experts in software programs are like training wheels. They help when you are
just getting used to the idea of being on a bike. But after you get a little
experience, they start to be more of a drag on your performance than a help.
You want to get rid of the need for training wheels as soon as possible. Here
are some tips:
- Keep a running journal. Amazingly, paper works well for this. The mere
act of writing things down helps you learn, and makes a huge difference.
- Read books on Crystal Reports. You don't have to spend huge amounts of
time doing this, and there really aren't all that many books available. Just
buy one and set aside 15 minutes each day to read something in it. If the
book has a practice problem, schedule some time to do that.
- Join a local user group. If there isn't one, start one.
- Read articles like the ones on Crystalkeen.
- Ask users what they want in their reporting system. Then refer to the
Crystal Reports books you've been reading to see how to do that. This
immerses you in your learning, rather than making it purely academic.
- Read the help files. Seriously. Keep a running Outlook appointment (or
use some other time scheduling tool) to read one or two per day.
Don't forget to read about our Crystal Reports
viewers,
analyzers, and
schedulers. Avoid common
color usage errors
- Don't just add colors gratuitously. Think of them as spices. They need
to bring out the flavor of the report, not bury it. And they need to work
together. Some spices clash when used together, and so do some colors.
- A common mistake with colors is to use large blocks of colored text on
the page. For example, yellow on a black background. You get maximum
readability with black text on a white background. You can use colored text
to emphasize or to bring out headings (or subheadings). But when used for
the main body of the text, it actually detracts from the report.
- Don't use colored page backgrounds. When people try to print these out,
the page becomes saturated with ink and paper jams result. With duplex
printers, the problem is twice as bad.
- Use contrasting colors. Many people can't see the difference between two
closely related light blues, for example. Variations in printing also cause
confusion. Then there's the issue of referring to the color. Bob in
Accounting is discussing the report. He can easily ask Beverly compare the
total that appears in dark blue text to the total that appears in dark brown
text. But how can he refer to the total in tan versus the one in light
brown?
- Avoid red backgrounds. These irritate the eye.
- Remember, color costs money. Use it where there's a return on that
investment (no need to calculate ROI).
- If there's no particular reason to use color, don't use it.
Other resources
This article is copyrighted by Crystalkeen, Mindconnection, and Chelsea Technologies Ltd.
It may be freely copied and distributed as long as the
original copyright is displayed and no modifications are made to this
material. Extracts are permitted. The names Crystal Reports and Seagate
Info are trademarks owned by Business Objects.
|
