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.