When working with
Crystal Reports, you will probably use the
Crystal Reports editor more than any other part of the
program.
The
Crystal Reports editor is the place you do most of the initial
work when creating a report. It designates and labels the various sections of
the report. You can do the initial formatting, place objects in the sections
where you want them to appear, specify sorting, grouping, and totaling needs,
and so forth.
The
Crystal Reports editor provides a very efficient environment
for designing a report because you work in the editor with data
representations, not with data itself. When a field is placed on the report,
the program uses a frame to identify the field on the editor; it does not
retrieve the data. Thus, you can add and delete fields and other objects, move
them around, set up complex formulas, and more, without tying up the computer
or network resources needed to gather the data.
The report created in the
Crystal Reports editor is a kind of virtual report; it has the
structure and instructions for creating the final report, but it is not the
report itself. To turn the
Crystal Reports editor report into a final report or into a
report that you can fine-tune, you "just add data." You do this whenever you
preview the report, print it, or output it in any other way. The actual data
will now appear in the report.
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