The Report Designer
The Report Designer lets you design reports by adding report objects, formatting the report layout, creating groups, etc. It’s where you spend the majority of your time when using Crystal Reports. If you’ve used previous versions of Crystal Reports then you are very familiar with the designer.
Figure 1-2. The report design environment.
Along the top of the screen are the different toolbars. These toolbars are Standard, Formatting, Insert, Wizards, and Navigation. By default, all of them are displayed when you open the designer the first time. You can rearrange them or disable the ones you don’t normally use.
The majority of the screen consists of the report being worked on. Along the top is the tab showing the report title as well as the tabs of any other reports open. Below that tab is the Design tab. It shows each report section (Report Header, Page Header, Details, etc.) and the report objects in each section.
Along the right side of the screen are windows displaying different characteristics of the report and design environment. The top-most window is the Workbench that was discussed in the last section. Below the Workbench are the Field Explorer and the Report Explorer windows. The Field Explorer shows the different fields that can be displayed on a report. These can be database fields, formula fields, parameters, etc. The Report Explorer displays each part of the report and lists every report object in each section. For complex reports displaying many objects, this makes it easy to get an understanding of what is displayed on a report without letting the placement of the objects confuse things.
Previewing Reports
The Report Designer also gives you the option to preview a report while working on it. Right below the tab that displays the report name are the Design tab and Preview tab. Clicking the Preview tab shows what the report looks like when it gets printed out. If the Preview tab isn’t shown, you can click on the Print Preview button to display it.
In preview mode, the left side of the screen becomes a group selection tree that lets you jump directly to a specific group on the report. In the middle of the screen is the report as it looks when printed out.
Figure 1-3. Report preview mode.
