Crystal Reports® 2008 For Dummies®

Chapter 7. Mastering Report Sections

In This Chapter

• Resizing sections

• Controlling group placement

• Creating summary and drill-down reports

• Generating barcodes

• Creating mailing labels

As I discuss in other chapters, Crystal Reports divides a report document into sections, including the Report Header, Page Header, Details, Report Footer, and Page Footer sections. These sections offer tremendous flexibility. A report can have multiple copies of each section, each one serving a different purpose.

You have a lot of leeway in how you format a section. You can vary the height, the background color, and even the number of columns in each section. By using Crystal Reports tools creatively, you can give your report the appearance you want.

In this chapter, you can read how to change section size, use different types of formatting, place groups, generate barcodes, and work a little postal magic.

Changing the Size of a Section

The width of a section is the same as the width of the report that the section is in. You determine this value when you set your margins.

The height of a section begins at some default value. If that value gives you the appearance that you want, you can leave it the way it is. If you want a different height for a section, say to accommodate a larger font, it's easy to change, as described next.

Consider the vertical spacing between the lines of a variant of the Mexico Orders, with Running Totals report that I show you how to create in Chapter 6. This version of the report has a box ...