Crystal Reports: Box and Line Formatting Recommendations

Boxes and lines can make a major improvement to the presentation of your reports. You can use them to separate areas of the report or to highlight different parts of the page.

Lining up boxes and lines can be difficult. One feature to make this easier is to select the option ”Extend to Bottom of Section when Printing”. This will resize the box or line and they will attach more accurately.

Drop shadow boxes or field borders can be a method to emphasize an object. We also like the rounded corners you can set.

Sadly, you can have either a drop shadow or rounded corners, but not both. If you set rounding on the corner you will find that the Drop Shadow option is disabled.

Take care with boxes and lines that you don't overdo it. You can find some good Web design books that explain this concept very well, and just transition that knowledge over to your Crystal Reports. Some basic tips:

• Don't put boxes around everything. That defeats the purpose of using a box.
• Avoid horizontal lines that go across the page. Those tell readers "stop reading here," and many eye path studies have shown that's exactly what readers do.
• Use boxes to set things off from the rest of the report. For example, highlight critical material or show a sidebar.
• Go easy on the shadows and other effects. You want those to help guide the eye, not distract the reader.

Some good things to put in a box:

• A "call to action" such as "Register for the Conference Today."
• References such as bibliographical information.
• Contact information (e.g., an e-mail address or phone number).
• Sidebar information.
• Static information that changes only when you manually update it, because it's not in the database.
• "Important Note."
• Message from the CEO.
• Deadline notices.

Now, the box and line tool is just one formatting tool in Crystal Reports. It has many others, such as:

• A full range of text formatting options
• Text rotation
• The ability to set object foreground and background colors
• Settable unique borders
• Drop shadows
• Special fonts
• Ability to include bitmapped images
• An actual highlighting feature that changes background colors conditionally
• A host of conditional formatting options
• A host of absolute formatting options
• The Suppress Property, which allows you to hide information (such as zeroes or empty field items)—this is similar to Word’s ability to suppress unused fields in a mail merge. It also allows you to do some cool things with page headers and footers.

In addition, you can use Report Alerts that activate every time you refresh the report. This feature provides a separate dialog box to give you a report history. It’s got some automation to it to reduce the drudgery of digging through large report histories.

Formatting enhances the usability of your Crystal Reports. For even more functionality, you can use third-party programs, such as the ones available here.

Instead, you want to use the formatting to accomplish such goals as:

• 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.

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.