Crystal: TOC add dots - crystal-reports

I try to add dots between the page title and the page number in Crystal Reports for a table of content. I found http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=1545153&page=1 in the web, but I wonder if there's a more simple and direct way to get the same result.
I'm using CR shipping with VS 2008.

You could draw a dotted line behind the page title and page number fields, bring the fields to the front, and set their backgrounds to white. It wouldn't quite be the periods you're looking for, but it's a bit less baroque than the other method.

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Crystal reports lines not showing

I have a crystal report for an invoice that is formatted with some horizontal and vertical lines. The vertical lines cut across a number of group and detail sections. Crystal reports is version 13, and I am using it in the designer in Visual Studio 2013.
I have two problems
1) The vertical lines only extend to the beginning of the first detail section on the first page. On subsequent pages they display all the way down the screen.
2) For the second and last row of one of my groups, the vertical lines don't display at all.
I have tried removing the lines and re-adding them, and this has made no difference. I have also tried changing ExtendToBottomOfSection to true for the lines, but this doesn't seem to make any difference. Any other suggestions?
The key thing with lines and boxes in Crystal Reports is the section/area they start in and the section/area they end in. These areas always go in a specific order: Report Header, Page Header, Group Headers, Details, Group Footers, Report Footer, Page Footer.
Depending on the height of the areas, some sections may be bumped to the next page. Most issues I see with lines and boxes are due to them not starting/ending in the right section to give the desired effect on every page, even pages where some sections may be omitted.
If you want lines to span the whole page, they should start at the top of the Page Header area and end in the bottom of the Page Footer.
What I think you're looking for is a slight variation on this (I'm guessing based on your problem description): to run the line down the entire page, but not actually have it appear in the page header/footer. In this case, you will want the line to start at the bottom of the page header, and end at the top of the page footer. This will give the effect of the line covering the page (but not the header/footer), regardless of how many records appear on the page.
These properties are easiest to control from Design view (where it's easier to distinguish section boundaries), or from the properties dialog (where you can make the top/bottom values exact).
Hope this helps!

RDLC Export to Word Showing a blank extra page

Im using RDLC for VS 2010 and exporting the graph to a word document gives one extra blank page (its not showing in PDF though). All of the dimensions in Report, Chart and Body are set 11x8.5 with no margins. I just wonder what could be causing the blank page in Word.
I was having the exact same problem and managed to solve it by adjusting the layout of my report.
Basically I moved all of my rectangles/tables etc to sit tightly next to each other, eliminating any white space where possible and also resized the report to be as small as possible, i.e. sit tightly against its contents.
It might also be worth enabling the report option to 'ConsumeContainerWhitespace'.
I suspect Word uses its own pagination logic, which is why you see a difference between pdf and doc. So it may just be the case that your report is over-running very slightly into the next page and saving a little space on the report may prevent this.
I realise this is not a precise answer, but I hope it helps nonetheless.

Crystal report (or SSRS) flowing text around image

I want to have this layout in Crystal Reports:
How can I do this? If it cant be done in CR or SSRS, is there any other alternatives?
I don't believe this can be done with Crystal Reports. I'm not as familiar with SSRS, but after looking through the field options I don't believe it can be done with it either. In general field locations are set static in reporting solutions.
I think this would be best done with html/css or even XSL. I don't know the scope of the issue, but I'd assume that you should be able to output an html or xml file from your application which could be opened with a web browser. For html you should be able to use the align or even float attributes or text-align in css to accomplish this.
I hope this helps.
If you want to have multiple columns of static text in Crystal Reports, then you'd just have to get creative with multiple text boxes, i.e. create 2 text boxes side-by-side and add text to each one until it looks right.
If you want to have 2 columns of data, here's how:
Keep it simple and start with a blank report.
Add your fields of interest to the details section. Resize them so that they only use the first 4 inches of space.
Go into your Section Expert->Details and turn on the Format with Multiple Columns option.
A new tab will appear called Layout. For this example, let's set the Width to 4 inches and leave the Gaps at 0.
Preview your report. If you have enough data in your dataset, it will automatically flood over to the right side of your screen.
It'll take a few minutes of fidgeting with the measurements to get everything looking the way you want. You can even have more than 2 columns if you set the Detail Width small enough.
Also, there is also an option in the Layout menu called "Format Groups with multiple column". It's hard to describe in text, but play with this if you have any grouping levels.

Reporting Services 2008 Chart DynamicHeight Property Creates Extra Space

I have a bar chart with horizontal bars. I used this article to setup the dynamic height property:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/robertbruckner/archive/2008/10/27/charts-with-dynamic-size-based-on-categories-or-data.aspx
Everything looks fine in the viewer, but as soon as you go to print layout, pdf, et.al there is about 50% more blank space below the chart.
I've created a sample report (using AdventureWorks DB) to show what is happening. I placed 3 charts with blue backgrounds, each inside its own rectangle with gray backgrounds. The first chart has an expression in the DynamicHeight property, the second chart has a hard coded value in the DynamicHeight property of 8.5in, and the third chart has a blank DynamicHeight and a 8.5in in the normal Height property. I have it return 15 items to place in the chart.
They all look fine in the viewer like I said before, but go to Print Layout and the first and second charts take up twice the space with half of it being blank below the report.
I tried to post the .rdl code, but its too much for the size limit.
I have an open ticket to Microsoft that has been escalated.
We've filed the necessary request to get collaboration from our development team so we should be getting a response regarding this functionality sometime in the next couple days. I'll let you know what they say.
Development has later confirmed it was definitely a bug, now are trying to decide if it is worth it to add to the next cumulative update or wait until SSRS 2010.
The work around until this is fixed, is to place the chart control into a table/tablix.
I added an empty table, deleted the details row and the two extra columns, and added my chart that was giving me problems. Everything appears to re-size correctly now.
try setting up the interactive size, margin and page size. im not sure if it will work but you can try. page size - margin = interactive size. do not exceed from your page size when giving value to your interactive size and margin, this also can cause white spaces in print layout.
hope it helps.
best regards,
cathy

Printing Crystal Report detail section to second page collated

I have a Crystal XI Release 2 report that my client wants to see on two pages. He wants the report to print the demographic information such as (name, address, etc...) for a person on the first page and the totals for the person need to print on the second page. The first page will include as many rows as will fit and the second page will have the same amount of rows which correspond one for one to the first page. Then the third page will contain a new page of people starting where the first ended.
He basically is looking for printing similar to how Excel prints (and please don't tell me to Export to Excel and print from there).
I came up with two ideas for doing this, but only got anywhere with one. The first was to run two reports (one for the demographic info and the other for the totals) which would be collated together somehow. I didn't get very far with this, but I didn't spend a ton of time researching this so I still think this could be an option.
The second way was to extend the report design to the width of two landscape pages, add my fields, and then change my page size back to a single landscape size before I get ready to print. This way sorta works, but can cause some weird issues. One is that if you try to edit/add a field on the second page when the report size is set to a single page landscape the fields are moved to the far right of the first page which makes sense because I would think that is supposed to be the editable region of the designer so I'd assume you're not supposed to have fields outside of this region.
All in all, the second way works, but I know there has to be a better way to do this. I wanted to see if anyone has had a similar request or have some other ideas on a better way to do this. Thanks
I can't think of an easy way to do this in Crystal.
You could get all hacky on the datasource and duplicate every 20(or however many fit on one page) rows. Then you would set up 2 details sections, one section for demographics and the other for totals. Then conditionally suppress them depending on remainder(pagenumber, 2).
Or you could use a subreport that accepts paging parameters and only returns 20 rows per page. But I'm not even sure if you can link a subreport parameter to the pagenumber special field.
How does your second way work? The extra fields just get printed on the next page somehow? However, the problem is that the fields stay outside the designer when you go back to one page and if you need to edit they all move back inside the designer? Couldn't you increase the page width before editing? That's not too bad if it somehow prints it out correctly every time.
I guess I will mark this as the answer since I still haven't been able to figure out a better way around it. If anyone finds a better way then post a response and if it works I think can toggle the answer.
What I do to get around this is to set my printer to the "Microsoft Office Document Image Writer" and then change the width to the widest it will allow which is 36". Then I put the demographic information from the beginning of the section to around 11" and put the totals stating just to the right of where the first section ended and go for another page width.
Then I make whatever changes that I need to make and set the printer back to the printer I want to use for the correct size. After you do this you will find that the editable area only extends to the first page, but you can see the second page of fields to the right. If you try to edit a field on the second page the field will move to the far right of the editable region which is at the far right of the first page so make sure you reset your printer before making edits.
I think I also had to play around with the width of the detail section on the layout tab of the section expert to get the report to print correctly. I set it to the combined size of the 2 pages for mine to look correct.
I think that this is probably a super rare issue, but if you are having a similar issue, that is how I get around it.