Crystal Reports: Field Clipping

You probably already know about Crystal's "Field Clipping" feature. This is a dangerous feature!

The story of "Field Clipping" begins with Crystal Reports, version 6. Field clipping didn't have a name, then. It was just an annoying "feature" you noticed when your numeric or currency column wasn't wide enough to show all of the digits. Crystal Reports would simply chop off the digits that didn't fit. There was no indication that digits were missing, so you could spend hours trying to get totals right, only to discover one total was off by a million or two.

The solution came with Version 7. You could finally set Crystal to show pound signs when a number was too wide, instead of just dropping digits. But instead of  providing the overflow indicator automatically, Crystal added a new feature called "Field Clipping." This allowed you to turn off clipping for any numeric or currency field.  But for some whacko reason, they left the default setting as "ON." This is sort of like setting the Enterprise to self-destruct by default, hoping Scotty would remember to turn that feature off on each new adventure.

Would any sane person ever use this "feature?" Not likely. Regardless of that, users must drill down through 3 layers into the options menu and turn it off.

Here are the keystrokes to make your new reports show an overflow indicator by default:

File > Options
Fields Tab
Number Button (you should also do the Currency Button)
Number Tab
Customize Button

Take out the check mark in the lower left for "Field Clipping."

This change will affect only new reports you create from this point forward. Any existing reports will still have field clipping until you change the numeric and currency fields individually.

To change an individual field, right-click on the field and select "Format Field". Then click the "Customize" button and take out the checkmark for "Field Clipping."

Whew. Sigh of relief. Now, here's another tip on fields. Charts can use any numeric field for data values.

Formulas and calculations on fields can be used in a chart as either an axis or a value to accumulate and place on the chart. You can use summaries of non-numeric values and “Count” a field and display that as a value in a chart.

Date fields can be used as an x-axis for a chart, so the dates display along the bottom of the chart. You can also control the aggregation of the date and summarize your data by day, month, quarter, etc.

Running totals are very useful to display in a chart, but you will need CR8.0 or greater to do this. CR7 includes Running Total objects, but you cannot use them on a chart. Prior to version 7, running totals were calculated using formulas and variables, but these may misbehave when placed on a chart.

CR Chart is a great charting tool. Click the image below and check it out!

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