grouping problem

[dh42891]

I've got a payment history report grouped by client name in CR 8.5. The client name field is truncated when written to the DB at something like 25 characters. Two of our clients are apart of the same chain of stores, but deal with us independently so they need to show up in my report as two different clients. In the program we use to sell tickets, their names are unique at a certain length. However, because the client names are truncated in the DB, CR sees both clients as one and groups them.

Example:

Jack-a-roo_client_1 displays as Jack-a-roo_client and
Jack-a-roo_client_2 displays as Jack-a-roo_client

So when I group by client, CR puts all the details for both clients under Jack-a_roo_client.

Any ideas on how to force that apart? I'm emailing the guys who set up the DB to ask them to expand the client name field, but they're sometimes, well, we'll say less than responsive. Thanks,

dylan

 

[lbass]

Do you have some other field that distinguishes the clients within the organization, e.g., location? If so, you could concatenate the name and location to form a unique field, as in:

{table.name}+", "+{table.location}

-LB

 

[dh42891]

I do but I don't want it displayed. In theory other fields like number of tickets sold and used and their balances would be different. I display the phone number right after the client name so perhaps I could do something like:

{client.name} & " " & {client.phone}


Is there a way to set the phone number to always show up, say, 45 character spaces from the right? regardless of the length of the client name?

 

[lbass]

You can group on:

{client.name} + {client.phone}

...without displaying it. After grouping on the above formula, remove the group name from the group header and place {client.name} there instead.

-LB