A problem I found when working with Crystal Reports 8.5 (and earlier versions) was that it was always difficult to figure out everything happening behind the scenes. For example, when I'm given someone else's report to make changes to I have to figure out how certain objects are being formatted. If a field is in Bold, I can click on it and look at the toolbar to see if the Bold button has been selected. If not, then I can go into the Format Editor and look to see if conditional formatting is being used. The last options are to look at the Hightlighting Experts or my VB code if I'm using VB6 or .NET.

 

CR 10 fixes this problem by adding a new item to the Workshop Tree: Formatting Formulas. By clicking on Formatting Formulas you see a list of all the sections on the report. By clicking on the '+' next to a section it shows you the objects within that section. Again, click on the '+' and it shows you the properties that have formulas associated with them. You can examine each formula and make changes if you need to.

 

By adding the Formatting Formulas item to the Workship Tree, CR10 lets you quickly see which objects have conditional formatting and get a quick overview of all the changes being made to a report behind the scenes. Nice feature!

 

Hope this helps,

 

Brian Bischof