Access Reports Vs Crystal Reports

[pelbert]

From data that is already in an Access app, can anyone tell me if using Access Reports within the database itself as opposed to say a 3rd party solution such as Crystal report has benifits or limitations with things like flexibility, formatting or any other benifits/issues? I would like to just use the Access Reports, but someone says they were too limited? Do you find this to be true?

thanks

 

[dhookom]

Access reports seem much more flexible to me. I have just a little experience with Crystal and I don't care much for most of it. Access allows easy query building, sorting and grouping, totals, and vba. Crystal does allow dynamic drill-down on but I have never had a need for this.

I have sent Crystal Report huggers to

http://www.invisibleinc.com/divFiles.cfm?divDivID=4

to see if they could duplicate the calendar, crosstab, and samples in the Corp Tech Demos. These are all usefull reports that I haven't found anyone that can duplicate in CR.

Duane
MS Access MVP
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[glalsop]

Some things you might consider:

Do you already have Crystal, or would you need to purchase it? If you already have it, then try both solutions. I think that you would find Access more suitable for some tasks and Crystal more suitable for other tasks. I think that you would also find that either are suitable for the vast majority of reporting needs, and that workarounds exist for most shortcomings in either.

Will you need to access your reports from outside of your Access application? If so, Crystal offers an extensive API that allows you to process and/or modify reports on the fly from external applications.

-Gary