Setting the Color Highlighting

The colors that Crystal Reports applies to the chart objects may not be to your liking. You might want to set certain items to be a particular color, or apply colors depending upon the value that an item has. Crystal Reports lets you do this using the Color Highlighting tab.

Figure 12-10. Customizing chart colors with the Color Highlight tab.

The Color Highlight tab works the same as the Highlighting Expert discussed in Chapter 5. You create rules based upon the values in the chart and apply a certain color for each rule. For example, in Figure 12-10, there are three rules for assigning chart colors. Each value for the Customer.Region field is assigned a different color.

Creating rules is quite simple. First click on the New button to create a default rule. On the right side are three drop down boxes. The first lets you choose the data point used to determine the color. This can be a data point along the X-axis or the Y-axis. The drop down box only lists data points used in the chart.

After selecting the data point, set the comparison field and the value to compare it to. Pick the color to apply from the list at the bottom. Any data point that matches these criteria is set to the chosen color.

Click the New button for each rule that needs to be applied and follow the same steps. When you are finished, preview the report and check that the colors follow the formatting you expected.