Trying to conditionally suppress columns and white space.

[DelmarDawg]

I am trying to use Crystal to display custom reports. Users can select which columns to display. As a result, I need to conditionally suppress columns and slide the rest of the columns to the left. This is not that big of a deal, however, the white space left behind is killing me. Does anyone know how to lose the white space as well as the suppressed column?

 

[synapsevampire]

There are different approaches that might suit you better, here's one:

You can build multiple detail bands which have different combinations of fields, only one detail band is ever displayed, the others being suppressed as the parameter dictates.

-k

http://www.informeddatadecisions.com

kai@informeddatadecisions.com

 

[DelmarDawg]

Thank you!
I have a group of twenty reports I am working on. Eleven of the reports will work very well with this solution. The others have too many possible variations for this to be a viable option. I am exploring another solution for these reports. Something along the lines of this:
Column A formula

[if isnull({table.ColumnA}) then
{table.ColumnB}
else
{table.ColumnA}]

Provided "Column A" does not have a value when Column B contains a value
this formula can be used in place of the "ColumnA" database field.

I am trying to make this work for columns A-H (basically sliding columns with data to the left). Other then the data types, can you think of other issues I should be looking into?

 

[synapsevampire]

I think that for that report you should dynamically build formulas and use those in your report.

Sounds like you grasp Crystal well enough, so I'll just annoy you with theory:

@formula1
if ubound({?MyParm}) > 0 then
(
if {?MyParm}[1] = "MyField1" then
{MyTable.MyField1}
else if
{?MyParm}[1] = "MyField2" then
{MyTable.MyField2}
else if
{?MyParm}[1] = "MyField3" then
{MyTable.MyField3}
else if
...
)
else
"NUKEME"

Now you can suppress based on the value being "NUKEME", but you've a whoooole lotta if's to put together.

Pretty annoying, eh?

-k

http://www.informeddatadecisions.com

kai@informeddatadecisions.com

 

[DelmarDawg]

You said a mouthful with that whole lotta "if's"!
This should give me something to do for awhile. Thanks again for the help. Oh, last thing...if I do have many, many "if's" how badly do you think it will degrade performance?