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Don't flaunt your success, but don't apologize for it either
 
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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25
February

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

The client was creating a report in SQL Server Reporting Services 2019, and wanted to sort fields that contained Null Values.

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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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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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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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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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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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21
June

How Do I Hide the First Row of an SQL Server Reporting Services Table?

During a recent training session a delegate asked "How do I hide the first row of a SSRS table?"

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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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08
February

How Do I Display Bespoke Values on SSRS Graph Data Points?

During a recent SQL Server Reporting Services training session, one of the delegates asked "How do I add different values to the data points on the graph"

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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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19
December

How Do I Quickly Select Multiple Crystal Report Objects, except Lines and Boxes?

I a currently in the middle of writing a beast of a Crystal Report, with multiple fields, boxes and lines, in multiple sections, and needed a way of efficiently selecting these objects.

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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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11
November

How Do I Show the 3 Largest Sales Figures per Group on One Row in SQL Server Reporting Service 2008 R2

During a recent SQL Server Reporting Services 2008 R2 consultancy, the delegate wanted to know how to display the 3 highest values per group as a single record.

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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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13
July

How Do I Only Display the Page Headings on the First Page in SQL Reporting Services 2008 R2?

During a recent SQL Reporting Services Consultancy session with one of my clients, they wanted to know how to only display the page headings on the first page of the report

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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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24
May

How Do I Stop Images Scaling

This was a bit of a funny one which had a client scratching their heads "How Do I Stop Images stored in a table scaling in Crystal Reports?"

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13
May

How Can I Get All the Dates between 2 Parameter Dates

During an SQL Server Reporting Services consultancy, the client needed to see the performance of the sales team over a period of time

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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
March

A Question of Rounding

One of my clients contacted me about a rounding issue in Crystal Reports

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11
January

How Do I Create a Sentence Case Text Field in SQL?

During a recent SQL server reporting writing project, the client wanted to display a text field that has various cases for the two values stored within, and wanted it standardised to sentence case.

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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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21
November

How Do I Add A Null to the Where Clause In list in SQL?

During a recent SQL training course one of the delegates asked "How Do I add Nulls to the In list of values in the SQL Where Clause"?

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14
September

How Do I Calculate the Last Friday of the Previous Month using SQL

During a recent SQL Server Reporting Services report writing project I needed to write some SQL to calculate the last Friday of the previous month for report parameters

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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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28
July

How Do I Calculate the 1st Monday of the Previous Month using SQL

During a recent SQL Server Reporting Services report writing project I needed to write some SQL to calculate the 1st Monday of the previous month for report parameters

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11
June

How Do I Calculate the Top N Sales by Group using SQL?

During a recent SQL Server Reporting Services 2008 R2 consultancy the client wanted to know how to return the Top N Sales by Group

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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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13
May

How Do I Add a Date Feild to a Time Field in SQL?

During a recent SQL server reporting service report writing project, I had to write a number of reports where the date time of a transaction was stored in two separate date and time fields.

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01
April

How Do I Display Form Letter Addresses without Spaces in Crystal Reports?

Over the last couple of months, we have had a number of clients asking "How Do I remove the spaces when creating addresses in form letters?"

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13
March

How Do I Calculate the Day Name from a Date Field in SQL?

During a recent SQL training session one of the delegates asked "How Do I calculate the day of the week that an order was placed?"

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13
December

How Do I Find Out the version of SQL Server Service Packs have been Installed

A common question that I have to ask my clients, is "What version of SQL Server Service are you working on and what Service Packs have been installed?"

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05
November

How Do I find the Primary and Foreign Key fields in an SQL Database?

During a recent Crystal Reports 2011 consultancy, I was working with a bespoke SQL based database, without any information about the structure, the tables, fields or the links.

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23
September

How Do I Automatically Refresh Reports in SQL Reporting Server 2008 R2?

During a recent SQL Server Reporting Services Consultancy the client asked "How do I get SQL Server Reporting Services 2008 R2 to automatically refresh the report when viewed within Report Manager?"

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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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13
March

How Do I Change the Bar Width in SSRS 2008?

During a recent SQL Server Reporting Services 2008 training session one of the delegates asked "How Do I Change the Bar Width of the Bar Chart?"

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12
February

How Do I Split the Date and Time from a DateTime field using SQL

During a recent SQL Server Reporting Services report writing project the client needed to separate the Date and Time from a DateTime field

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13
January

How Do I Deal with Null Values in Address Formula Fields in SQL?

During a recent training session on of the delegates asked "How do I stop Null addresses, if one of the address fields is Null in the formula"?

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25
June

How Do I Print Picture Metafiles in Crystal Reports Correctly?

Over the last couple of weeks I have had a number of clients asking the same question "How Do I Print Picture Metafiles (*.wmf and *.emf) extension files correctly"? in various versions of Crystal Reports

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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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30
May

How Do I Rotate Text in SQL Reporting Services 2008 R2?

Over the last couple of training sessions, a number of delegates have asked the same question, "How do I rotate the text in Tablix and Matrix cells within SQL Server Reporting Services 2008 R2?"

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23
May

How Do I Display Double Lines in Tablix Items in SQL Reporting Services?

During a recent SQL Reporting Services 2008 (SSRS 2008) report design project, the client needed to display the totals within a Tablix report item with bottom double line border

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21
May

How Do I Get Sub-Reports to work in SQL Reporting Services 2008 R2?

Over the last couple of weeks I have had a number of clients ask me the same thing when creating reports with sub reports in SQL Server Reporting Services 2008 R2, which is how do I get them to work?

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13
May

How Do I Control the Headers and Footers based on Varying Record Report Items in SQL Reporting Services 2008

During a recent SQL Server Reporting Services 2008 report design project, the client wanted different headers and footers, based on different information on the page, of various lengths.

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29
April

How Do I Ensure the Latest Data is Being Returned in BIDS SQL Reporting Services 2008?

Recently I have had a number of clients contacting me due to their reports displaying the wrong data, when the report is previewed in BIDS SQL Server Reporting Services 2008

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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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09
April

How Do I Remove the Image Grey Background in Crystal Reports XI?

During a recent report design consultancy, in preview the images was fine, but when the report was printed the images on the page printed with a grey background.

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19
March

How Do I Extract all the Characters before a Specific Character in a String Field?

During a recent Crystal Reports XI report design project two tables needed to be linked together, where in one table the field only contained the user name, in the second table the field contained the user email address, which consisted of the user name, plus the organisational domain.

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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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25
February

How Do I Remove the Extra Pages in SQL Reporting Services 2008?

I have had a number of clients of the past few months all asking the same question, "How Do I Remove the Extra Pages in SQL Server Reporting Services 2008?"

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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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24
January

How Do I Add Text Summary and/orGroup Name Fields without Losing the Drill Down Functionality in Crystal Reports

I have had a number of customers ask me about how they can retain the drill down functionality, when the Group Name fields and/or Summary fields are added to some text, in various versions of Crystal Reports

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08
January

How Do I Remove Duplicate Records in Crystal Reports?

I have had a number of clients with the problem of their datasets returning duplicate records in Crystal Reports.

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12
December

How Do I Create an Index for a Dynamic Parameter in Crystal Reports 2008?

Recently a client had an issue with creating a dynamic parameter based on the Customer Name field returning over 3000 values, and the filtering feature only worked if one was in the correct page.

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15
November

How Do I Draw a Box Around Groups in Crystal Reports 2008?

During a number of recent Crystal Reports 2008 training sessions, delegates have asked the same question: "How do I draw a box around the groups of the report in Crystal Reports 2008?"

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01
November

How Do I Display the words N/A for Zero Summary Values in a Cross Tab in Crystal Reports 2008?

Over the last couple of Crystal Reports 2008 training sessions a number of delegates have asked the same question, "How Do I Display the words "N/A" for Zero Summary Values in a Cross Tab?"

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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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11
October

How Do I Change the Database and/or the Table the Report is based on in Crystal Reports 2008?

Over the last couple of weeks I have had a number of clients asking me how they can change the datasource and/or the table that the report is based on without have to start designing the report from scratch in Crystal Reports 2008.

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13
September

How Do I Format the Y-axis on a Percentage Stacked Chart in SQL Reporting Services 2008?

A number of clients have recently asked me "How Do I Format the Y-axis on a Percentage Stacked Chart in SQL Reporting Services 2008?" To show the correct percentage scale.

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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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03
July

How Do I Add Interactive Sorting in Crystal Reports 2008?

Over the last couple of weeks I have had number of clients ask me "How do I apply an interactive sort to reports in Crystal Reports 2008?"

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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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21
May

How Do I Create a TopN Cross Tab Report in Crystal Reports XI?

During a number of recent Crystal Reports XI training sessions, I have been repeatedly asked "How Do I Create a TopN Cross Tab Report?"

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17
May

How Do I Create a Gradient Shaded Background Report in Crystal Reports 2008?

A client recently asked me I how do I create a gradient shaded background effect to a report, using Crystal Reports 2008?

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14
May

How Do I Suppress a Blank Sub-Report in Crystal Reports 2008?

One of my clients emailed me recently, asking how do I suppress a sub-report that does not return any records, in Crystal Reports 2008?

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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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24
April

How Do I Create a Font Shadow Effect in Crystal Reports?

During a workshop session a client asked how do I create the Microsoft Word font shadow effect in Crystal Reports?

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17
April

How Do I Display the HTML Formatting within a String Field in SQL Reporting Services 2008?

During a recent conversation with a client I was asked how do I display the HTML formatting of a string field in SQL Server Reporting Services 2008?

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30
March

How Do I Find the Position of a Specific Character in a String Field using SQL?

I was recently asked during a SQL Reporting Services training session, how does one find a position of a specified character in a string field.

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17
March

How Do I Display the Field Headings on all pages of the SQL Reporting Services 2008 Tablix?

During a number of recent training courses I was asked the question how do I get the tablix column headings to repeat on all the pages in SQL Server Reporting Services 2008?

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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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20
February

How Do I Only Display the Last 2 Records of a Group in Crystal Reports 2008?

During a recent training session a delegate asked how does one only display the last two records for a group?

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30
January

How Do I Create a Custom Chart Palette in SQL Reporting Services 2008

During a recent SQL Reporting Services 2008 training session, one of the delegates asked how one would create a custom palette, for a chart

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23
January

How Do I Plot a Target Value on a Chart in Crystal Reports?

Over the last month I have been asked a number of times how do I plot a target value on a chart in Crystal Reports.

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09
January

How Do I Add a Target Line to a Chart in Crystal Reports 2008?

Over the last month or so I have been asked a number of times how do I add a target line to a chart in Crystal Reports 2008.

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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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03
November

How Do I Get Crystal Reports XI to Display more Dynamic Parameter Values?

A number of clients have recently been asking, when creating dynamic parameters in Crystal Reports XI, how do I display more than the first 1000 values.

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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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29
September

How Do I Combine Records from Two Separate Tables in Crystal Reports?

I was recently asked by a client how do I combine records from two separate tables to make a single dataset in Crystal Reports?

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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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02
August

How Do I Display the Description Field of a Dynamic Parameter in Crystal Reports?

Over the last couple of weeks I have been asked a number times how do I display the description field values of the selected dynamic parameter field in Crystal Reports?

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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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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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08
June

How Do I Suppress Blank Fields Embedded within Text Objects in Crystal Reports?

I was recently asked How Do I Suppress Blank Fields Embedded within Text Objects in Crystal Reports?

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