Crystal Reports: Easy Way to Resize Label Reports in Crystal Reports

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Crystal Reports: Easy Way to Resize Label Reports

You can use Crystal Reports to design a wide range of different report types. Using the Section Expert and setting the details section to “Format with multiple columns” is an easy way to create a report that prints labels.

The real challenge is how to control the vertical spacing so your report prints in the correct position on all the labels on the page. Even a slight difference between the height of the details section and the height of your label will cause alignment problems.

Place an empty text box in the details section (colored green in the screen shot on the right). Select the text box and use “Object Size and Position” on the object.
Set the X and Y positions to zero and the height of the text box to the height of your labels.
Resize your details section so the text box fills the entire label. This will set the section to the same height as the text box. Suppress the printing of the box, so it doesn’t print on your label.

Now, this brings up another question. Why are you using your business intelligence system to disseminate data? This can create confusion, but we do have a solution. First, understand that Crystal Reports was not developed as a means of presenting data. It was developed as a means of presenting information derived from data.

The typical report is, in essence, a data query with nice formatting. This leaves a tremendous amount of value unrealized. If you're the report developer or administrator, putting out these kinds of reports makes you far less valuable to your company than you could be. And during staff cutbacks, that's personally important.

Adding irony to the situation, staff cutback decisions are typically made by Excel spreadsheet--which is why those cutbacks often don't make sense. They aren't made based on business intelligence but on rudimentary analysis of partial data.

You need to ensure your reports contain business information, not business data. They need to be decision tools, not intermediary data sources. And you need to make sure users understand this. Else, the system will be underutilized and your own position will be of less value.

The solution? When using the system to disseminate data:

Don't use the word "report" anywhere on or in the report.
Mark a data dissemination with a name saying exactly what it is, e.g., "Mailing Labels."
Don't mix data dissemination with reporting. Keep these as two separate functions.
If the data may be important to users, you could use a drilldown function or you could simply refer to a file containing the data.

Remember, the more time people spend massaging data, the less time they spend doing productive work. This time-wasting can really add up across a company and cause the company to lose its competitive edge.

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.