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A belief is not merely an idea that the mind possesses, it is an idea that possesses the mind
 
R. Bolton
Institute of IT Trainers - Freelance Trainer of the Year 2006 & 2009
Liverpool Business Connect Member
  Maximum Impact Solutions Limited - Reporting Solutions, Creating Answers
Reporting Solutions - Creating Answers, Crystal Reports, Dashboarding (Xcelsius) & SQL Reporting Services

Crystal Reports, Xcelsius (Dashboarding) and SQL Reporting Services Blog

Welcome to our blog of scribbles and musings designed to share with YOU our insights, knowledge and experience from training, designing and writing reports using Crystal Reports, SQL Server Reporting Services and Crystal Dashboarding (Xcelsius) for our customers.

Please contact us with any questions, queries and/or issues that may have arisen from your use of Crystal Reports, SQL Reporting Services and/or Crystal Xcelsius in response to out blog posts.

We love nothing better to be challenged by something that makes others scratch their heads Feed ME!!!!

13
April

How Do I Add More than on Table on a page from the same data in SSRS?

During a recent SQL Server Reporting Services report writing project there was a need to have 3 tables from the same dataset object on the page.

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02
June

How Do I Do a Sum Distinct Records in SQL Server Reporting Services?

I have had a couple of clients recently asking the same question "How Do I Do a Sum Distinct Records in a SQL Server Reporting Services Tablix/Matrix?

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22
May

How Do I Sort Alphanumerical Field Values in SQL Server Reporting Services 2019?

I recently had a client contact me with an issue sorting a alphanumerical field with in SQL Reporting Services Tablix object.

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20
February

How Do I Create a Weekly Grouped Report in Crystal Reports 2016?

I am currently working on a Crystal Reports 2016 report writing project, where the clients has a number of weekly reports, where their working week starts on a Saturday

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14
February

How Do I Display the Week No in Crystal Reports

A client contacted my recently, where they wanted to display their weekly data by week number

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13
January

How do I extract characters before a specific character in a string field using SQL

Working with a new client, they wanted to extract a company name from a field that had extra characters.

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14
October

When is a zero not a zero??????

I have had a number of clients recently contacting me with conditional formulas not behaving as expected, when testing for zeros.

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22
July

How Do I return the Previous Row Value in SSRS 2017

I recently had a client contact me, who wanted to return the previous row data.

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18
June

Why is Hide Duplicates in SQL Server Reporting Services Not Working?

A client contacted me recently, whose report displayed an extra blank line when hiding duplicates in the SSRS report

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13
May

How Do I Conditionally Format Cross-tabs in Crystal Reports?

I have had a number of clients ask me the same question recently, "How do I conditionally format cross tabs in Crystal Reports?"

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09
April

What's this GetChar Function in SQL Server Reporting Services?

During a recent SSRS report writing project, I am came across this GetChar function.

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04
March

How Do I Add an Extra Blank Page to my Crystal Reports?

During a recent Crystal Reports training session, one of the delegates asked "How do I add a blank extra page at the end of the report?"

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18
February

Why is my VAL function not working in SQL Server Reporting Services?

I recently had a client contact me, because the VAL function in the report was not working properly

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21
January

How Do I create a bespoke NoRowsMessage?

I had a client contact us asking "How do I create an customised NoRowsMessage?

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17
September

How Do I Add Stars to my SQL Server Reporting Services Reports?

Over the last few months I have has a number of clients, asking "How Do I Add Stars to my SSRS reports?"

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17
August

How Do I Exclude Blank Lines in Concatenated Fields in SQL Server Reporting Services

During a SQL Server Reporting Services consultancy session, the client asked "How do I exclude blank lines in a concatenated address field?"

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31
July

How Do I Apply Conditional Formatting to a Bar Chart in SQL Server Reporting Services?

During a recent SQL Server Reporting Services workshop, a delegate asked "How do I apply conditional formatting to a bar chart?"

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10
May

What's this BIGMUL function in SQL Reporting Services?

You know when you come across a function in any application, and it leaves you scratching your head?

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13
April

How Do I Insert a Page Break After a Specific No of Rows in a Table in SSRS?

I recently have had a couple of SQL Server Reporting Services clients asking, "How Do I add a Page Break After x No of Records in Tablix Objects?"

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29
March

A Question of Rounding in SQL Server Reporting Services

Over the last few months, clients keep on asking me the difference between the SSRS Ceiling() and Floor() functions.

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15
January

How Do I Create a Cross Tab Ratio Calculation in Crystal Reports XI

During a recent consultancy a client asked "How Do I calculate a ratio of two summary fields in cross-tabs"?

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17
October

How Do I Sort a Memo Field in Crystal Reports?

During a recent consultancy, a client asked "How does I sort a memo field?"

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06
July

First and Last Days of Time Periods in Crystal Reports

Here's just a quick blog post for calculating the start and end dates of calendar periods in Crystal Reports

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09
June

How Do I Prevent Having Spacing in my Addresses in my Crystal Reports

Most of the queries I seem to be answering recently is issues when designers are creating reports with address fields, with missing data.

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19
May

When is a Carriage Returm not a Carriage Return in Crystal Reports?

I know this sounds like the start of a joke, but I recently found out that not all carriage returns are equal.

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04
April

How Do I Work with Optional Parameters in Crystal Reports?

During a recent Crystal Reports consultancy, the clients asked "How do they work with the Optional Parameter option?"

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13
February

What's this ExtractString Function in Crystal Reports?

So I was just playing a Crystal Reports over the weekend, like you do, and I came across this function ExtractString

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08
December

What is the FIX function in SQL Services Reporting Services?

So I was just playing around in SQL Reporting Services 2008 looking at some of the functions, when I came across the FIX function

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19
September

How Do I Convert Text to Sentence Case in Crystal Reports? - Amendment

This is a follow up to the blog post if did last year on "How to display a text field with various cases to sentence case?"

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26
August

How Do I a Set Number of Records per Page in SSRS?

During a recent SQL Server Reporting Services 2008 report writing project, the client wanted a report that displayed a specific number of records per page.

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15
August

How Do I Report the Previous Days Data in Crystal Reports?

During a recent training session, on of the deelgates asked, "How Do I return the previous days data in Crystal Reports?

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08
June

How Do I Display a Block Address on One Line in Crystal Reports?

During a recent training session, one of the delegates asked "How do I display the block text of a field on one line?"

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13
March

What is the function of CurrentFieldValue in Crystal eports?

During a recent Crystal Reports training session one of the delegates asked "What is the advantage of using the CurrentFieldValue?"

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13
February

How Do I ensure my Conditional Suppression works in Crystal Reports?

During one of my consultancy session, I had a client, whoso conditional suppression formula returned unexpected formatting, when the report ran.

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14
December

How Do I Calculate Averages in SQL Server Reporting Services?

During a recent SQL Server Reporting Services report writing projectI noticed that the inbuilt Avg SSRS function returned the wrong value.

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04
August

How Do I Create a Banded Report with Grouped Tables

During a recent training course a delegate asked "How do I create a banded report in a grouped table?"

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09
June

How Do I Convert Text to Sentence Case in Crystal Reports?

During a recent Crystal Reports training session, one of the delegates asked "How to display a text field with various cases to sentence case?"

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04
September

How Do I Change the Font Colour of a Field based on a String it Contains in Crystal Reports 2008?

During a recent Crystal Reports 2008 consultancy project I was asked "How can I change the font colour of a field, if it contained a certain string within it?"

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13
June

How Do I Display Zeros instead of Blanks in a Matrix in SSRS 2008?

During a recent SQL Server Reporting Services 2008 report writing project, the client wanted all the spaces of the matrix, to be replaced with zeros.

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13
May

How Do I Sort by Financial Year?

During a recent SQL Server Reporting Services 2008 report writing project, my client wanted the budget vs actuals charts and matrix months sorted by financial year instead of calendar year.

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28
April

How Do I Calculate the time difference of the values of the same field in Crystal Reports?

During a recent Crystal Reports training session a delegate asked how she could calculate the time difference between the entries of the same field.

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06
June

How Do I Display Hours and Minutes in Crystal Reports 2008?

A number of clients have asked me the same question recently, how do I display the difference between two date-times fields, in hours and minutes, in Crystal Reports?

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20
April

How Do I Start the Page Numbering on a Page that is not the First Page in SQL Server Reporting Services 2008?

During a recent training session, one of the delegates asked "How do I start and display my page numbering on the third page of the report in SQL Server Reporting Services 2008 (SSRS 2008)?"

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07
March

How Do I Extract Characters from within a String Field in SQL Reporting Services 2008?

During a recent SQL Server Reporting Services 2008 report design project, one of my clients needed to extract some text after the last instance of a specific character of a string field.

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14
February

How can I Add Multiple Conditions to the Visibility Property in SQL Reporting Services 2008?

During a recent SQL Server Reporting Services 2008 (SSRS 2008) report design project, a client asked "How can I Add Multiple Conditions to the Visibility Property of a Report Item?"

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30
November

How Do I Display a Number as the Same Number of Characters in Crystal Reports?

Over the last couple of weeks I have had a number of clients asking "How Do I Display a Numerical value in a field as the same number of characters?" in various versions of Crystal Reports

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24
October

How Do I Highlight the First x No of Rows in a Grouped Report in Crystal Reports 2008?

Over the last couple of weeks I have been asked a number of times by clients "How Do I Highlight the First x Number of Records in a Group Report in Crystal Reports 2008?"

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23
July

How Do I Add jpg Graphics from an Access database in Crystal Reports 2008?

A client recently asked me how do I add the *.jpg graphics that have been stored in an Microsoft Accces 2003 database location field, to my report?

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10
July

How Do I Start the Page Numbering on the Second Page in Crystal Reports?

I have had a number of clients recently ask me "How do I start the page numbering on the second page of the report, displaying Page 1, in Crystal Reports?"

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19
June

How Do I Display the next 3 Months in Crystal Reports XI?

I had a client recently ask me "How do I display the abbreviated names of the next 3 months from a specified date time field in Crystal Reports XI?"

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13
June

How Do I Display the Ordinal of the Date in Crystal Reports XI?

During a recent Crystal Reports XI training session a delegate asked, "How do I display the Date Ordinals in Superscript?"

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06
June

How Do I Extract the First Name from a Contact Field in Crystal Reports XI?

I was asked during a recent training session "How Do I Separate the First Name from the Surname in a Contact Name Field in Crystal Reports XI?"

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28
May

How Do I Highlight the Largest Value in a Cross-tab in Crystal Reports 2008?

Over the last couple of weeks I have been asked by a number of clients "How Do I Highlight the Largest Value in a Crystal Reports 2008 Cross Tab?"

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08
May

How Do I Return All the Records upto the Previous Friday in Crystal Reports?

During a recent Crystal Reports XI training session, a delegate asked how does one return of the records upto the previous Friday?

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01
May

How Do I Dynamically Change the Font Size of a Field in Crystal Reports?

During a recent Crystal Reports 2008 training session a delegate explained that due to the fields having varying sizes there was a need to change the font size based on the length of the data of the field.

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20
March

How Do I Display ALL for Multi Value Dynamic Parameters in SQL Reporting Services 2008 R2?

During a recent training workshop I was asked the question how do I display the words "ALL", when the Select All option of an multi value dynamic parameter is checked in SQL Server Reporting Services 2008 R2?

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28
February

How Do I Display the Different Currency Symbols in Crystal Reports 2008?

I am currently working with a client, using Crystal Reports 2008, creating international sales reports for their myriad of customers buying from different regions and countries around the world. I was asked how do I display the different currencies of the sales table.

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07
November

How Do I use the MOD Function with Hidden or Suppressed Rows of Data in Crystal Reports?

Earlier this year I added a couple of blog posts, about using the MOD function to create a banded report. I had a couple of comments, pointing out that although the formulas were correct it did not take into consideration any hidden or suppressed rows of data, in Crystal Reports.

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17
October

How Do I Find the No. Times a Character Appears in a String Field in Crystal Reports?

I was recently asked, how do I find the number of times a character appears in a string field in Crystal Reports XI?

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10
October

How Do I Create a UK VAT Custom Function in Crystal Reports?

During a recent training session, I was asked by one of the delegates, how do I create a custom function, that calculates the VAT rates for the UK, in Crystal Reports 2008.

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04
October

How Do I Extract the File Name from the Path in Crystal Reports XI?

A client recently asked me how do I extract the filename from the path, in the filename special field in Crystal Reports XI?

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12
September

How Do I Calculate the Week Commencing Date from the previous year ago in Crystal Reports?

I was recently asked during a Crystal Reports XI training session, how do I calculate the week commencing date for the same date from the previous year?

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01
August

How Do I Calculate the No. of Working Day Between 2 Dates in Crystal Reports?

During a recent crystal reports XI training session, one of the delegates asked, how do I calculate the number of working days between two dates.

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28
July

How Do I Display a Field with a Fixed Number of Characters in Crystal Reports?

A client recently asked me how do I display a field with a fixed number of characters, using leading zeros, in Crystal Reports XI.

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01
July

How Do I Sort the Numbers in a Text Field in the Correct Order in Crystal Reports??

A client recently asked me how to sort numbers in a text data field correctly in Crystal Reports XI.

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06
June

How Do I Control the No. Records Per Page in Crystal Reports 2008?

I was recently asked how do I control the number of records printed per page to 50 in Crystal Reports 2008.

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31
May

How Do I Display the Previous Current and Next Month data in Crystal Reports XI?

I was recently asked how do I display the previous, current and next months data, based on a parameter date in Crystal Reports XI.

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05
May

How Do I Dynamically Change the Fields and Field Positions in Crystal Reports XI?

A client recently asked how does one dynamically change the report fields and their relative field positions on a report in Crystal Reports XI?

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29
April

How Do I Display Additional Text to fields in Crystal Reports?

During a recent Crystal Reports 2008 training course I was asked how do I display additional text to fields?

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27
April

How Do I Replace the Dashes with Spaces in a field in Crystal Reports?

During a recent Crystal Reports XI training course I was asked How do I replace the dashes with spaces in the phone field?

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14
April

How Do I Create a Conditionally Formatted Cross Tab in Crystal Reports?

Last week a client asked How Do I Create a Conditionally Formatted Cross Tab in Crystal Reports?

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05
April

How Do I Highlight the Largest Value of a Group in Crystal Reports?

During a recent Crystal Reports XI training session a delegate asked me how do I highlight the largest value within a group?

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16
March

How Do I use a parameter to control the visibility of an image in Crystal Reports?

A client recently asked How does one use a parameter to display the correct company logo on a standard report in Crystal Reports?

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01
March

How Do I Conditionally Suppress the Results of a Formula in Crystal Reports?

I was recently asked How do I create a formula that calculates the difference, in days, between the order date and delivery date, where any value less than 1 would be hidden, in Crystal Reports?

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24
January

How Do I Display Boolean Values using Symbols in Crystal Reports?

A client recently during a Crystal Reports XI training session, asked How do I display boolean values using symbols?

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29
November

How do I Calculate the Current month Start and End Dates in Crystal Reports?

A client recently asked me How do I calculate the start and end date of the current month in Crystal Reports?

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05
November

How Do I Create a Custom Colour Traffic Light System in Crystal Reports?

A client recently asked me How can I get the orange or amber colour, in Crystal Reports?

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05
October

How Do I Create a Banded Cross Tab in Crystal Reports 2008?

Last week a client asked How do I create a banded effect on a cross-tab, in Crystal Reports 2008, to make the data easier to read?

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14
September

How Do I Control the Image Visibility in SQL Reporting Services 2005?

Last week a client asked How do I control the visibility of an image based on the company viewing the report in SQL Server Reporting Services 2005?

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11
August

How Do I Solve the Divide by Zero Issue in SQL Server Reporting Services?

A client of mine emailed a report, designed in SQL Server Reporting Services 2005, that when compiled produced a "Divide by Zero" error message. Here is a solution to this problem.

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21
July

How Do I Change the Default Chart Palette Colours in SQL Reporting Services 2005?

Recently a client asked how do I change the default colours of the SQL Server Reporting Services 2005 chart palette?

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07
July

How Do I Change the format of a DateTime field in SQL?

A client has just asked me how does one format a datetime field in SQL to display the date in the format dd/mm/yyyy?

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09
June

How Do I Create a Customed Grouped Financial Year Report in Crystal Reports?

During a recent training session, a delegate asked how does one create a grouped report based on a financial year that starts in May, using Crystal Reports?

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20
May

How Do I Add an All Option to a Parameter in Crystal Reports?

This week I was asked How does one add an All option when populating dynamic distinct list of values for parameters in Crystal Reports?

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26
April

How Do I Resolve the Divide by Zero Issue in Crystal Reports?

A client of mine emailed a report, designed in Crystal Reports XI, that when compiled produced a Divide by Zero error message. Here is a solution to this problem.

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31
March

The MOD function

Designers can use this function to create a banded report, to make list reports easier to read.

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31
March

How Do I Create a Banded Report in Crystal Reports?

A client asked me How can one change the banding on a simple list report, to alternate every 2 records?

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22
March

Crystal Reports Non - String Parameter Formulas

A number of clients have asked me how does one display the parameter values of the report. This is the second part and covers non string parameter formulas, to be placed in the heading sections of the reports.

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08
March

Crystal Reports String Parameter Formulas

A number of clients have asked me how does one display the values of the report string parameters in the heading sections of the reports.

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