Crystal Reports: Advanced Tutorials
Review of the Basics / Grids and Guidelines
Subtitles of the Movie (Crystal Reports: Advanced / Review of the Basics / Grids and Guidelines)
When working with formatting, you should also be aware of the Grids, the Guidelines and the Alignment Tool. These make it much, much easier to actually get a good effective layout on the screen itself. Let's start with the Guidelines. I'm in Design View, notice how I have markers in my ruler, these are my Guidelines. I have them also on the side in the Page Footer. This allows me to take my field, and very quickly align it to that actual Guideline itself. However, the strength comes in, that I can now take my Guideline, move it on the screen, and the fields will, from this point forward, align with that Guideline. It's a wonderful way to readjust your fields on your screen. Now I do want you to be aware when you see a Guideline on the side, that it is going to limit your ability to manipulate the height of a field. For instance, do you see where I have a Guideline in the Page Footer. I can take my margin, and I can move it, only up to that Page Footer. I can try as much as I want to, but I cannot go any further. I'm going to choose to Undo. Now when I undo, I am going to go ahead, take that Guide, and eliminate, or remove that Guide, just by dragging it to the side. In doing so, now I can go ahead and adjust the bottom margin. You see the Guides can be very, very useful so that you do not accidentally change the format of a report. Now the Guides can also be turned on in Print Preview. If I go to View, I'm just simply going to go to the Guidelines and put in Checkmark next to my Guidelines. Once again, as I did before, when I'm on the field, I can actually take my Guideline, and move it on the screen. However, I find it very difficult to move the Guides when I'm in Print Preview, I find it much easier in Design, where I can actually see the Guideline on top. Now if I return to View, return to Guidelines, I can turn them off, just by removing the actual Checkmark. Along with your Guidelines, you'll find Grid. The same principle of turning it on in Preview, or Design holds true. This time, I get a series of small dots. It is there for the same component, in order to align it. Here when I actually choose multiple fields, a right-click on those fields, will allow me to automatically align to that grid. It will take each field, and make sure that it aligns to the closest grid. Notice also, when I select my fields, that I can align to the top, to the middle, to the bottom, or even to a baseline. This allows me to very quickly go in, choose a number of fields, I am going to hold my Shift key down, while I select my fields, I'll right-click, Align, and you'll notice it automatically allows me to choose the top. Notice too, when I right-click, that if I'd like to adjust my size, so each field is the same width, same height, or both, same size, I can do so automatically. These features make it really, really quick and easy to align all the data on your screen. Remember the key is, instead of having to just eyeball where the data's going, I can go to Design, I have my Ruler that tells me the exact location, if I'd like it to be at exactly five and a half, I can place it at exactly five and a half. This allows my field to align automatically, and again, when we move the Guidelines, the fields move with us. The beauty of it, is we can always go back to View, and very quickly turn it off, so that we have a clean screen. Take some time, work with your Guidelines and Grids, once you get used to using them, they really are a lifesaver.
Tutorial Information
| Course: | Crystal Reports: Advanced |
| Author: | Lauri Sowa-Matson |
| SKU: | 34268 |
| ISBN: | 978-1-61866-016-9 |
| Release Date: | 2011-09-30 |
| Duration: | 7.5 hrs / 100 lessons |
| Work Files: |
Yes |
| Captions: | No |
| Compatibility: |
Vista/XP/2000, OS X, Linux QuickTime 7, Flash 8 |
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