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When it comes to mundane things like moving fields around within a report, the last thing you want to do is spend a long time doing them. One, your hand will cramp up, and two, you're wasting time. But if you align the fields in your report with guidelines in the horizontal ruler, this will make moving data fields and their corresponding header fields A LOT easier. There is an options setting that can create the guidelines for you by default when you drop the fields onto the report, but you can also create the guideline yourself by clicking once on the ruler. When a field is aligned with a guideline, it's corners will turn red. My general recommendation is to align the front end with a guideline and the back end with the guideline with which the next field is aligned, so that the fields are bumpered up end-to-end. The advantage of using guidelines like this is that moving fields around can take much fewer clicks -- I'd say to the tune of 50%.
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Using running totals can be a pain in the a$$, so I feel bad for people who use them even when there are much easier options available. If you can use a summary field, then by all means, do it! Both fields are available by right-clicking a field in the detail section, and selecting "insert". But if you are using running totals with multiple groups, you will have to repeat the insert action (lol) and then set the evaluate and reset functions for EVERY running total you want to insert in each group. But with a summary field (sum, average, minimum, etc.), you can just insert the summary once and then copy and paste the summary field to each group. If you have several different summary fields you can just copy and paste them all at once -- much easier!
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This piggy backs on the running total issue. Some people do conditional calculations (conditional sums, conditional counts, etc.) using running totals with a condition in the "evaluate" options. But you really don't have to do that! I recommend doing conditional calculations in a formula field placed in the detail section, and then doing your summary (sum, ave, etc.) on that formula field. For example, you can do an "if [condition] then [number] else 0" and then sum that formula to do your conditional sum. Or, you can do an "if [condition] then 1 else 0" and then do a summary count on that formula field to get a conditional count. The advantage here is that this allows you to use summaries rather than running totals, which is always a good thing!
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Using parameters can help greatly if you want to avoid having many versions of the same report that vary only slightly. Want them to select a subset of the data? A specific date range, accounting period, product, or customer? Want them to choose which field to group and summarize by? Just use a parameter! For example, have the user select which customer(s) they want on the report by adding a "customer" parameter and making it equal to the customer column in the record selection criteria. If they want to be able to select all customers, just put an "if-then" statement in the selection criteria -- like, if [custmomerparameter] = "" then true else [customerparameter] = [customercolumn]. True just means to let all records pass, so it would let all customers through. To have them choose the field to group by, (1) create a parameter with default options, (2) create a formula field which uses the chosen or entered parameter value to select which column to output, using an "if-then" statement (if [parametervalue] = "customer" then [customerfield] else if [parametervalue] = "product" then [productfield]), and (3) create a group on that new formula field. This is especially handy when used with multiple groups, summary data, and drill-down (for another discussion!).
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I can't tell you how many times I've encountered users an Excel spreadsheet generated from Crystal, and all they do regularly after opening it is scroll down to the bottom, and get the column total! This is not an efficient use of Crystal as a BI tool. If you have Crystal Enterprise (and odds are that you do if the report is scheduled anyway), the better way to go would be to create a summary report that hides the details and shows up front all the subtotals and grand totals. This way, the user can see the summary numbers (total of sales by product, and the grand totals, for example) on a one-page report, with all the numbers they are interested in right there in front of them. Not to mention that you can show other interesting summaries like averages, counts, etc. The detail is still available if the user wants it, since they can drill down into the hidden section by clicking on that group in the report. After that, things can get even more interesting with a drill-down report with multiple groups.
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