Clamp page footer in CR 2008

[MEDL2002]

I have a report with multiple detail sections and two of these detail sections display subreports (this makes a report pretty hard to predict in terms of which section will display on which page). I need to display some text in a page footer and this text is to print only on the 1st page (this is a very firm requirement - the text is to display always on the 1st page and only on the 1st page).
I'm looking for a way to get rid of the empty "reserved" space that remains at the bottom of pages 1+ (the text in the page footer is supressed on pages 1+ but a space is "reserved" at the bottom of each page). I thought that "Clamp page footer" option that is availble in Crystal Reports 2008 would solve my problem, but this option works only for HTML report, and not when they are printed to a printer.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

 

[LaurieHamlin]

What causes each detail section to show? Is there a suppress condition for each section?

 

[MEDL2002]

Yes, details sections are suppressed based on either "report type" (there are 3 "report types": 1st that shows all detail sections; 2nd that shows first 11 detail sections, and 3rd that shows first 2 sections, skips section 3-11, and then displays the remaining 3 detail sections) and based on property type (regular, 1st nations and mines).

 

[IanWaterman]

This is a major design fault in Crystal, I have had this problem for years as I use Crystal to produce documents.

The only way I have managed to minimise the impact is to use a subreport to hold footer data.

You can then minimise the SR to the thinnest possible strip and do same with footer. It will then expand for page 1 and remain a very thin footer for rest of doc.

Ian

 

[MEDL2002]

Thank you for your response. I added a subreport with my text to the page footer, however, the text still won't display until I make a page footer "high" enough for the text to fix. I had tbe subreport very thin at first, had a setting "Can Grow" set but it was displying no data. So I kept on playing with it, but as I said, nothing was getting printed in a page footer until I made the subreport large enough to display the text. What do you think I'm missing?

 

[IanWaterman]

You learn something new every day.

When I have needed to do this I have used multiple page footers and have different footer SRs depending on page number.

I always assumed PF would grow with an SR, but as you have rightly said it does not. I have tried several permutations but can not force PF to grow even though SR grows if I place it in Report Footer or Group Footer.

Sorry to have mislead you but it seems PFs are worse than I thought.

Ian

 

[MEDL2002]

That's no problem. I really liked your approach becuase it reminded me to think "outside the box" when working with Crystal Reports. So even though it didn't work, I will remember it for the future. Again, thank you for taking the time to share your solution.

 

[hilfy]

Someone mentioned using two page footer sections - I would try this:

1. Create one that is tall enough to hold your text and set the Suppress formula for the section to Pagenumber > 1.

2. Then create another empty one that is very small and set the Suppress formula to Pagenumber = 1.

It might not work, but it's worth a shot. Also, take a look at your page setup and check to see what the bottom margin is set to - this will also feed into how much space is left at the bottom of a page.

-Dell

DecisionFirst Technologies - Six-time SAP BusinessObjects Solution Partner of the Year

http://www.decisionfirst.com