Hiding and Suppressing Sections

Hiding sections is used for drilling-down on detail records. As discussed in Chapter 4, you can design your report so that groups only display summary information. This presents the user with a much smaller report. If they are previewing the report with the CrystalReportViewer, then they can look at the detail information by double clicking on the group header. This creates a new tab in the viewer with the detail information being displayed inside.

Suppressing a section is done when you don’t want the user to see the information in it. Of course, this leads to the question that if you don’t want the user to see the information then why did you add the section? Suppressing sections is usually used in conjunction with conditional formatting. The Formula Editor is used to turn this option on or off depending upon other data that the report has access to. For example, if this is sensitive data then you would only let administrators see the detail information. All other users would have the detail section suppressed and they would only be able to see the summary information. This effectively lets you use one report for different users and different purposes.

Printing Sections at the Bottom of a Page

Printing sections at the bottom of the page is useful when printing reports that are one page long and have summary data listed at the bottom. Add a group to the report and set the group footer to print at the bottom of the page. An example is an invoice where the bottom of the page prints the total amount due. Invoices also print the aging schedule of past due balances at the bottom of the page. Another example is a form letter that requires authorized signatures of certain parties. Just put the signature lines in the group footer and set it to always print at the bottom of the page.

Although you can set the Details section to always print at the bottom, this will have no effect. The detail records always print one after the other from top to bottom.