CR Chart for Crystal Reports

• Pricing

• Screenshots

• Download the free demo.
• Download the user manual.

You will love it, and so will report users.

• Engineering reports
• Operations management projects
• Productivity reports
• Sales presentations
• Wherever you have a need for clear and compelling data presentation

With this outstanding product, you can:

• Set chart properties at runtime
• Create boxplots, Pareto Charts, error bars, and waterfall charts
• Use pivot functions--swap series/group, data reversal, and so on.
• Use conditional logic
• Create wow factor with drop shadow and alpha channel transparency effects.

Have superior control over:

• Axis labels: skipping, decimal precision, scale range, etc...
• Color of markers and risers.

Take advantage of user-programmable:

• Lines on any axis (or free floating)
• Markers/labels at any point on the chart
• Label names and user-defined datasets.

This program does much more. Want to try it out? Do this:

1. Bookmark this page.
2. Download the free demo.
3. Download the user manual.

See below for screen shots.

And, of course, you can use this along with some good formatting to achieve stunning look.  Thoughtful formatting enhances the usability of your Crystal Reports. That said, here's a caution. Don't get carried away with formatting. A report is not the place to demonstrate how many formatting techniques you can use.

Instead, you want to use the formatting to accomplish such goals as:

• Present a clean but compelling appearance.
• Guide the reader's eye to what's important. That means very little highlighting or bolding.
• Separate information or visually group it.
• Make the report consistent with other company literature. For example, use company colors, company logo, and the official font (if there is one).
• Create a different flavor or appearance for each type of report. For example, financial reports have a green border, sales reports have a salmon border, production reports have a blue border, and so on.
• Show what has changed.
• Highlight problem areas.

Avoid common color usage errors

• Don't just add colors gratuitously. Think of them as spices. They need to bring out the flavor of the report, not bury it. And they need to work together. Some spices clash when used together, and so do some colors.
• A common mistake with colors is to use large blocks of colored text on the page. For example, yellow on a black background. You get maximum readability with black text on a white background. You can use colored text to emphasize or to bring out headings (or subheadings). But when used for the main body of the text, it actually detracts from the report.
• Don't use colored page backgrounds. When people try to print these out, the page becomes saturated with ink and paper jams result. With duplex printers, the problem is twice as bad.
• Use contrasting colors. Many people can't see the difference between two closely related light blues, for example. Variations in printing also cause confusion. Then there's the issue of referring to the color. Bob in Accounting is discussing the report. He can easily ask Beverly compare the total that appears in dark blue text to the total that appears in dark brown text. But how can he refer to the total in tan versus the one in light brown?
• Avoid red backgrounds. These irritate the eye.
• Remember, color costs money. Use it where there's a return on that investment (no need to calculate ROI).
• If there's no particular reason to use color, don't use it.