Free-form placement

You may also want to use Seagate Crystal Reports without a grid, in a free-form environment similar to that of a drawing program. Free-form means that you can place objects anywhere you want them to appear on your report. Your only restriction is that the program does not allow you to place chart and Cross-Tab objects on the Page Header, Page Footer, or Details section.

To work in a free-form environment, select the Free-Form Placement option on the Layout tab in the Options dialog box.

Free-form placement on

In order to create dynamic reports and reduce printer driver dependency as much as possible, it is recommended that all sections of the report be formatted with the Free-Form Placement option turned on. This is especially true if your report includes OLE objects such as charts, boxes, lines, and bitmapped images (e.g. company logos).

When a section is formatted with free-form placement, all objects can be placed anywhere on that section. Seagate Crystal Reports places objects within a section based on their absolute coordinates. These coordinates determine the vertical placement of objects on your report. What this means is that you control the vertical placement of single-line, text-based objects rather than the printer driver. In doing so, you can better protect your reports from printing inconsistencies caused by using different printer drivers.

However, while the printer driver no longer controls the vertical spacing of text-based objects within the sections, it still determines horizontal spacing of text within the text-based objects, as well as the inter-line spacing of multi-line, text-based objects. So, while free-form placement gives you better control, you must still take into account these considerations when designing your reports. See Placing multi-line, text-based objects.