Crystal Reports: Searching and Reports

You can use the find button to look for data in your report. Looking at a large report and trying to find some data can be like Indiana Jones lost in the Temple of Doom. Use the “Find” button to search the report text for some data. That can help you find that specific invoice or customer and where they appear in the report. It also works on your design objects. (This tip first posted in 2003)

This raises another issue: designing for search. The typical report recipient operates on a completely different plane of "computer skills" than does the Crystal Report designer. Many of these people are harried executives, and quite of few of them are technophobes who do not have the programmer's inclination to try things before seeking help or giving up. That doesn't make them bad, lazy, or stupid. They just have a different worldview from the typical Crystal Report designer.

Make it easy for them to conduct searches. Think of key words they are likely to search on. And, include those key words as keywords (notice the change of spelling, here). When a word is key to a user, give it special treatment--make it a keyword.

For a very large document, one approach is to simply list the keywords or keyphrases pertinent to a give section of that document. You can create a special subreport to include this.

For smaller documents, simply take care in what names you give to various report elements. For example, rather than showing just "East Coast Clients" as a heading, add a subhead that includes zip codes, state abbreviations, or some other key information a user is likely to search on. Don't overdo it, though. If, for example, you decide to go with zip codes, don't also use states.

You must balance search enhancement against the issue of creating a monster report that is intimidating and unwieldy. Talk to end-users and experiment. This will not only help you produce more user-friendly reports, but it will also help you network within your organization and improve your job security.

You can more effectively do searches for design purposes by using Report Analyzer: http://www.crystalkeen.com/crystalreporttools/analyze/ With this powerful tool, you can: Discover unused Formulas, Fields, and Variables. Identify group settings which cause blank pages and footers.

Identify missing standard Crystal documentation best practices (Report Title, Author, Description special fields). Locate reports which may use the "Convert null field to default" setting inconsistently. Keep versions of your documented reports for historical comparison. Automatically detect reports that do not take advantage of server side database processing. Detect record selection formulas which use data type conversion functions. Detect group fields which use formulas instead of SQL Expression fields. Find report tables which use less than an optimal number of fields. Discover special fields which cause an additional pass over the report data source. And so much more! Click here to see what you're missing by not having Report Analyzer.

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