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CrystalReports
on Steroids

Crystal Reports: Use Guidelines to Save Time

Guidelines give you a quick and easy way to rearrange and align columns or rows in your Crystal Report.

By moving the guideline, you can move all the headings, fields, and summaries attached to it. When you add a field to the detail section of your report, you get a column heading in the Page Header and a guideline to align the heading with the field.

So that you can see the guidelines, we recommend you tick the option "Show Guidelines in Design" on the File menu.

There are some things to remember about Guidelines:

  • To attach an object to a guideline, you must move the object to the guideline--not the guideline to the object.
  • You can attach a guideline to the left, right or centre of an object.
  • You can use guidelines to resize several objects in a column with a guideline on the left and right of an object.

There is a trap, if your objects are attached to more than one guideline and you inadvertently move the right guideline to the left past the left guideline. This sets the object to a negative width. So the field disappears from your report. It is still there--but, like the Invisible Man, but it's not something you can see.

Use the lasso technique to find this invisible object, then swap your guidelines back to display it. Using the left mouse button, drag from top left to bottom right to select all the objects in an area of the report. This will select all the visible as well as the invisible objects. Then use Ctrl-Click to deselect the visible objects until you only have the invisible one left.

Display your guidelines to make it easier to see where they are attached and move one until your object is displayed.

In earlier versions of Crystal Reports, you right clicked on the background of the report and selected Guidelines/Design and ticked that option to show guidelines in the design tab. In version 11, this has been relocated to the View/Guidelines menu item. The view menu has had this item since at least version 8.

Version 9 and later also has right mouse menu items to remove all horizontal or vertical guidelines. This would a fast way to reduce cluttered guidelines in a report.

Moving guidelines in v9 and earlier does not attach them to objects – you have to move (or resize) the object in order to attach it to a guideline. This changed in v10 and v11 where you can also attach objects by moving the guideline towards the object.

A brief discussion of related issues is below this article.

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.

 
Something many report designers don't consider is the clutter factor. You can use those guidelines to see where the columns start and end. While you have them displaying, consider the clutter. Common clutter causes with columns (whether you have any copper clappers or not) include:
  • No new info. For example, every item in a column shows the same data. Put the data in preceding text and eliminate the column.
  • Repeated info. For example, it's a parts list and the quantity is usually 1 but there's a smattering of 2, 3, and 4 in there. Find some other way, perhaps using subreports that group by qty, to show this info.
  • Too many columns. If the sheer number of columns makes the report dense, decide what the purpose of the report is and eliminate the least relevant columns. You may be best off summarizing the same information in a sentence or two above or below the columns.
  • Tiny fonts. Often, to squeeze in too many columns, the report designer will reduce the font. This is a sure way to annoy everyone 40 years old or older. In most companies, the people who make the decisions on layoffs, bonuses, and promotions are over 40. Are you sure using small fonts is a smart thing to do?
  • Poor color choices. A black and white report is usually adequate, but one done in color can be much more appealing and easier to read. That is, if you use color properly. Use a minimal amount, and ensure you always have a high contrast between a background color and the font color used on that background.