Crystal Reports XI default template 1

[Dausa67]

Good Morning,
I use CR XI everyday all day and I have yet to figure out how to set some defaults for when I develop a report.

1. When I create a report my defaults on page setup are "Letter" & "Portrait". I would like for it to always be "Legal" & "Landscape".

2. When I click finish to generate the report, it always includes the print date & page number. I do not want those two fields either.

Can anyone tell me how to change my defaults to correct these two problems?

Thanks

Clay

 

[Madawc]

Templates in Crystal are used to apply a style to an existing report than offering a standard starting point. Useful if there is some fancy 'house style' that the report needs to conform to after you have got it working. But not if everyone accepts the basic layout that you'd get using the 'Expert' functions.

Some defaults can be changed - see File > Options - but not the ones you're wanting. I assume it's what you get when you use the Report Wizard.

If you're wanting a basic report that includes standard elements or page-size setup - "template" in the sense the term it is used in Microsoft Word etc. - you'd be better off creating your own. What I've done is create my own "templates", which I call __Template_A, __Template_B etc. I pick one up and then use Save As to begin a new report that is already set as I like it.

You can also save such a "template" and apply it as a Crystal Template to an existing Crystal report. But this process has a way to picking up and re-using fields in odd places, not entirely satisfactory. At least that was how it happened in Crystal 10: I have not tried it in Crystal 11.


Madawc Williams (East Anglia, UK). Using Crystal 10 & 11.5 with Windows XP

 

[rheard]

I found actually starting a report from scratch the hardest most time-consuming part, especially as reports required from our ticketing system generally require 7-8 tables.

So one day, I just stripped the details from an old report, kept the Header/Footer, and saved it as a blank report. Converted this from Portrait to Landscape and saved another. This gave me 2 serviceable templates that make starting a report so much easier.