Can Crystal do this (newbie question); custom reports

[Craig87]

Hi,
I am totally new to this and I cannot find an answer on the site. Please forgive a newbie.

I am trying to create 200 custom reports which pull and combine from a possible 100 .xls files.
The .xls files are custom (with comments, notes, etc) so they cannot be created on the fly.

I would like to be able to run the program and end up with 200 .xls (or PDF) files each of which may be different which can then can be printed with the recipients name on the cover.

I have found Apache FOP which will pull data from excel spreadsheets and create a PDF, but it cannot pull complete charts as far as I can tell.

Can crystal reports do this?
If not, can a VB script be written to make this happen?

Thanks !!!

 

[synapsevampire]

VBA should handle this more safely than Crystal.

Crystal can't pull the charts, but it can create charts from data.

Hard to describe how to pursue this with either option without knowing how the .xls files are laid out, but Excel is NOT a great data source, and since they're custom files, the formatting may require a cell level integrity check due to human error.

I think that your best solution is to try to import this data into a real database, and use that as the data source.

The next option would probably be VBA.

Crystal would probably be my last choice.

-k

http://www.informeddatadecisions.com

kai@informeddatadecisions.com

 

[rvoller]

I have to agree with the prior response regarding having your data in a relational database. As an experienced crystal report writer, you can do this with crystal; but, you are going to change the way everyone connected with this project enters their data. In the long run it would be worth it if you distribute updates of these reports on a regular basis. Otherwise, if this is a one time thing go about it another way. Just a friendly suggestion.