Suppress extending vertical line 1

[Prestaul]

In the detail section of a report I have six textboxes which build a table. Each of these boxes have the Can Grow property set to true and often one or more of them have more than one line of text in them. One or more of these boxes are often suppressed depending on how many columns I need displayed.

What I need is vertical lines seperating the columns, but I cannot draw lines because I cannot provide a formula for suppressing drawing objects and if not all of the columns are there then I cannot have extra lines. Also I cannot just display a border on the left or right of textboxes because they will not extend to the bottom of the detail if one of the other textboxes has more than one line.

I guess that what I really need is either a way to suppress a vertical line or a way to force a textbox to extend to the bottom of a section. Also, a crosstab will not work for this table for many reasons including the fact that you cannot wordwrap within a column.

Thanks in advance,
Prestaul

 

[bdreed35]

You can either use the border properties of your fields. You can conditionally suppress them if necessary.

Another option would be to place some text objects and set one of the borders to single. You can stretch the text object as long as you need and will look like a line for all intents and purposes. You also can suppress it when necessary.

~Brian

 

[Prestaul]

This won't work. The problem with using the borders on my text boxes is that they can grow independently of eachother (with word-wrap) and so if only one of them has multiple lines of text then that is the only one that will have a continuous line (the others may only have one line of text).

The problem with using other textboxes, while I can suppress them, is that they cannot be made to grow to the bottom of the section if any of the textboxes has more than one line of text...

What I really need is a way to create a vertical line which both can be suppressed and can grow to the end of the section. Or something to simulate this.

 

[lbass]

You might try inserting multiple detail sections above the section which contains your data. Each would have a different number of lines formatted to extend to the bottom of the section, corresponding to the fields which will not be suppressed. Then format each detail section to "Underlay following section." Finally, format each detail section (with lines) to suppress according to the criteria you will be using to suppress your data fields.

-LB

 

[Prestaul]

I've already been there, LB. The problem is that, let's say I put my lines in 'Detail A' and my textboxes are in 'Details B'. When my textboxes grow and section 'Details B' grows the section with the lines doesn't grow with it so the lines stay short...

It sounds like you boys are going through all of the same thought processes that I did, maybe I'm just out of luck. There is a solution I've found to the problem but it requires me to place 30 extra textboxes in my report and I think that is absurd.

 

[lbass]

You could add the same fields to all detail sections, and then select them all simultaneously and format them for "can grow" and then change the font to white, instead of suppressing them. Then each section will grow as your displayed detail section grows, and the underlay feature will then work appropriately. This tests out here. Although I guess this is the equivalent of creating separate sections, appropriately formatted, based on the fields selected for display and using conditional suppression to determine which section to display--no underlay feature necessary!

-LB

 

[Prestaul]

This sounds like the method that I found but it requires me to put 30 extra textboxes onto my report just to get five stinking lines... The more I work with Crystal the less I like it. It seems as though everything I do is a hack because they haven't given me low-level access and they expect everyone to work inside of the little box that they've made for us. If CR wasn't the only tool out there they wouldn't be able to sell a single software liscence. I appreciate the help but I think that I'd rather just tell the client they'll have to deal with not having lines between the columns.