How to print text vertically

A tip in the May, 2002 issue of the Crystal Care eNews for Crystal Reports newsletter showed how to take the text in a text object and print the letter vertically.

BUT suppose you wanted to print a character field from your database in the same way?

In the following example we are using a For loop. This is available in Crystal 8.5 and above. We will print the field NAME vertically.

Here is how to do it:

Create a formula field with the following syntax:

WhilePrintingRecords;
numbervar stlen := length(trim({EMPLOYEE.NAME}));
numbervar k ;
local stringvar output;
for k := 1 to stlen do
(
output := output + {EMPLOYEE.NAME}[k]+chr(13);
);
output := output + chr(13)

Insert the formula in your report and then right-click, pick ôFormat Fieldö and
Check the ôcan growö property.

Here is how it works:
Line 2 stores the length of the field striped of blanks into the variable stlen.
Line 3 declares a number variable, k. We will use this to control the number of loops.
Line 4 declares a string variable to use to store the output. It is important to include the ælocalÆ qualifier or the field will keep growing from record to record!
Line 5 sets up the loop. We will go through the loop the number a number of times equal to the current value of stlen.
Line 7 parses the database field. The sub-string operator [ ] (brackets) picks out the kth letter of the field and appends it to the growing output string field. After each letter we are inserting a hard return. The CHR function translates a number to its ASCII equivalent. CHR(13) is equivalent to pressing the ôreturnö key on your keyboard.
Line 9 adds one more return at the end of the string for formatting purposes.