Crystal Reports XI: Beginner Tutorials
Designing a Basic Report / Basic Formatting
Subtitles of the Movie (Crystal Reports XI: Beginner / Designing a Basic Report / Basic Formatting)
In this movie we're going to cover Basic Formatting. Using Report1, the report we've been using so far, the one that points at the Employee Table of our Test Database, go ahead and click on the Preview tab. Now, for formatting, you don't need to be in the Preview tab, you can either choose to be in the Design or the Preview tab, it's really up to you. For the purposes of learning the formatting techniques we're going to do it in Preview tab so we can see the results of our changes right away. Go ahead and put your mouse over the EmployeeID Field Header. Notice, by merely dragging the mouse over we get a faint outline of the object. This is the Object Box, and helps tell you where it starts and ends. Now if you click on it the highlight becomes a little more obvious and it includes these boxes in the center and in the middle of the sides. This lets you know that this object has been selected and it can now be moved or formatted depending on what you want to do with it. With your mouse inside this box, go ahead and right-click. Choose Format Text. Go ahead and click on Border. Border refers to this imaginary line that goes around an object. This object is essentially a box. Now, by default these boxes really have no heft or weight. There is no color, there is no line, there's nothing that defines it. This is something that Crystal uses just to position it and makes sure it lines up correctly. However, by choosing the Border tab here, we can choose to put two single lines around the left and the right, a single line on top, and a single line along the bottom. Now notice down here it gives you a sample. This is our Text Object and this is what it would look like if we made those choices. From here you can choose what Color that border's going to be, and notice your sample changes as well. You can also choose to fill in the Background color of the box. Now the Default is None, of course, making it transparent, but if we do choose a background you can choose it to be white, gray, or silver. As you can see, this is a sample of what it would look like once you've pressed OK. Now let's go ahead and click on the Font tab. Like most Windows programs, Crystal has all the fonts that are installed on your system available for use. You'll only be limited by the ones that have been installed on your specific machine. Go ahead and click down and choose any font you want. I'm going to choose one that's fairly ostentatious, Bodini. Notice the sample changed to Bodini. From here, instead of Regular, I can choose Italic. The style, of course, is also going to be defined by your system. Some fonts only come in italic, or bold. It really depends on the font that's been installed. You can also choose a Size. So instead of 10, I want to choose 12. You can also choose the Color of the font. I'm going to choose Lime. Now, there's no accounting for taste, so I'm actually going to remove that and put a dark blue, a Navy. Notice the effects. Also, currently Underline is checked. You can take off the Underline, put it back, and also strike it out. You can also choose the character spacing, but more on that later. Let's go ahead and press OK. Notice we have a good sample of what it's going to look like, but not exactly. Notice you press OK all of our changes to the EmployeeID have taken effect. It's got a blue border, a silver gray filling, and a navy blue font along with the font also being Bodini MT Black. Now, you can take that and you can apply that to any field you choose. You can also choose a series of fields by holding the mouse down above an object, clicking, dragging the selection box all the way over and releasing. From here you can right-click on one of the objects and format them all. Go to our Border, choose Single, choose blue, click on Background and choose silver. And you can go and choose whatever fonts you want. In this case I'm just going to leave it Arial and call it Bold. The point of this is you can highlight a field or any series of fields and essentially change it to whatever font, color, border you wish. In this tutorial there's no accounting for taste and we really don't get into design. I will give some pointers based on the type of report it is. If it's a long list that needs to be read, or if it's just a simple summary. Again, Crystal allows it completely up to you to choose.
Tutorial Information
| Course: | Crystal Reports XI: Beginner |
| Author: | Kurt Dunlap |
| SKU: | 33966 |
| ISBN: | 1-935320-29-7 |
| Release Date: | 2009-02-10 |
| Duration: | 6.5 hrs / 95 lessons |
| Work Files: |
Yes |
| Captions: | No |
| Compatibility: |
Vista/XP/2000, OS X, Linux QuickTime 7, Flash 8 |
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