Using the Report Experts

Depending upon your needs, creating reports can be a simple or complicated process. For example, it is very easy to print mailing labels from an address database or a form letter to a list of subscribers. On the other hand, it can be very complicated to write a report that uses multiple sub-reports which are based off of user entered parameters. Fortunately, the report experts that come with Crystal Reports, often referred to as “Wizards” in other applications, make it easy to quickly produce a variety of reports. The experts are useful for writing complex reports because they give you a way to quickly make a professional looking report template that you can customize for your specific needs.

Crystal Reports uses different experts to create seven types of reports: Standard, Form Letter, Form, Cross-tab, Sub-report, Mailing Label, and Drill-Down.

Since experts are designed to be easy to use, you might be wondering why this chapter needs to explain them. The problem with experts is that they are supposed to be simple to use, but often a tool that is simple is generally not very useful. As a result, today’s applications are designed so that not only can you quickly answer the questions presented and create the final product, but you can also click on various buttons and checkboxes to add advanced functionality. This gives you the best of both worlds: a simple to use interface with extra features for advanced users.

Each expert consists of a multi-tabbed dialog box. Many of the tabs on each expert are used elsewhere within the main functionality of Crystal Reports. This chapter summarizes each tab and the details are covered in later chapters.