Crystal Reports: Page N of M–improved performance

Unfortunately, using it can really slow down the development process.

Crystal does "Page on Demand," which means it can show you the first page of your report while continuing to process data for subsequent pages. But if you are using "Page N of M" or "Page Count," the entire report has to be processed before you can view the first page.

One solution is to omit the Page count or Page N of M until the final stage of report development. But page numbers and counts are useful on all reports. And if you need to make later changes to the report, you don’t want to delete and recreate the field. Adding and removing fields can lead to errors.

A better idea is to use a formula:

//PageNofM //or

"Page " + totext(PageNumber,0,"","")

Use the first line for production reports (and comment out the second line), and use the second line while you are designing or (redesigning) the report.

It's usually better to put the page number in the footer, rather than in the header. Why? Because that's not "headline" information. It's really tertiary, so it's best to have it at the bottom.

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