Crystal Reports  

Common Tab (Section Expert)

Use the Common tab to set properties such as: visible, new page before, keep together, etc. for a desired section.

Hide (Drill-Down OK)
Select this check box if you do not want the section to print, but you want the section contents to be available for drill-down.
Suppress (No Drill-Down)
Select this check box if you do not want the section to print, and you do not want the section contents to be available for drill-down.
Print at Bottom of Page
This check box causes each group value to print only at the bottom of a page. (Details continue to print in their normal positions.) The command is useful for printing invoices and other reports where you want a single group (i.e., line items grouped by order number) to appear on a page and the value for that group (subtotal, summary field, etc.) to print only at the bottom of the page.
New Page Before
New Page Before is an available format property for Group (header and footer) and Details sections. When you select this option, the program inserts a page break before it prints the section. The page break thus comes before:
  • the group (if using the option with a Group footer section), or
  • each report record (if using the option with a Details section).

The Page Header and Page Footer appear on each page. If you have a subtotal or summary field in a Group Footer section, you can use the New Page Before option to put these values on pages following the value being totaled.

New Page After
When this check box is selected, the program inserts a page break after it prints the section.
  • The Page Header and Page Footer appear on each page.
  • Use New Page After in the Group footer section to print each group on a separate page.
Reset Page Number After
Resets the page number to one (1) for the following page, after it prints a group total. When this option is used in conjunction with Print at Bottom of Page, the program prints a single group on a page, prints the group value at the bottom of the page, and resets the page number to 1 for the next page. This option is useful whenever you are printing multiple reports from a single file (i.e., invoices), and you want each report to be numbered beginning with Page 1.
Keep Together
When this check box is selected, the program keeps all the lines of the section together, either on the current page (if there is room) or on the next (if not).

In a customer list, for example, data on a single customer (from a single record or linked records) may extend over several lines. If the standard page break falls within the data for a customer, the data will be split, part on one page, part on the next. But with Keep Together, the program inserts the page break before the record begins so that all the data will be printed together, on the following page.

Note   This option does not work with multi-line string or memo fields. A page break may occur in the middle of a multi-line field.
Suppress Blank Section
When you select this check box, the program hides the report section if it is blank, and prints it if it is not.
Underlay Following Sections
Select this check box if you want the selected object to underlay the following section(s) when it prints.
Format with Multiple Columns
When you select this, the Layout Tab appears.
Reserve Minimum Page Footer
This option enables you to minimize the space reserved for your Page Footer sections, thereby maximizing the space available for valuable report information on each page. This option only affects a Page Footer area with multiple sections.

By default, Crystal Reports reserves space at the bottom of each page for your Page Footer sections. This space is reserved whether or not the Page Footer sections are conditionally suppressed. Normally, the space reserved is equivalent to the combined height of all Page Footer sections that are shown or conditionally suppressed.

You can, however, minimize the space reserved. To do so, first conditionally suppress individual Page Footers as desired. Then select Page Footer in the Sections area of the Section Expert, and select the Reserve Minimum Page Footer option on the Expert's Common tab. When you do this, Crystal Reports will only reserve space on each page for the tallest of your Page Footer sections.

Relative Positions
This option allows you to lock the relative position of a report object next to a grid object within a section. For example, if you place a text object one centimeter to the right of a cross-tab object, during report generation the program will push the text object to the right, so that the one centimeter space is maintained regardless of the width of the cross-tab object.
  • Only horizontal locking is possible. If you need to preserve relative vertical positioning, you should create a new report section.
  • Once Relative Positions is selected for a section, you can no longer drag objects to new positions within that section.
  • Relative positioning applies only to objects placed to the right of grid objects (that is, objects that can grow horizontally).

See Also

Report Section Overview | Determining Printing Area Characteristics | Report Processing Model | Section Expert