Working with conditional formatting

Conditional formatting is formatting that applies only under certain conditions. For example, in a report you may only want:

• customer balances printed in red if they are past due
• the dates to appear in Day, Month, Year format if the customer is Canadian
• background color to appear on every other line.

Seagate Crystal Reports makes it easy to apply conditional formatting in these and hundreds of other situations.

With absolute formatting, you follow the select, then apply procedure. For conditional formatting, you follow the same general procedure, but you go a step further and set up conditions that determine whether or not the formatting will be applied. You specify these conditions using simple formulas.For more information on creating formulas using Crystal syntax, see Crystal syntax fundamentals. Or, for more information on creating formulas using Basic syntax, see Basic syntax fundamentals.

When a conditional formatting formula is set up, the formula overrides any fixed settings you have made in the Format Editor. For example, if you select the Suppress option, then set up a conditional formula for the Suppress option, the property will still apply only if the condition in the formula is met.

Seagate Crystal Reports enables you to set both on and off properties and set attribute properties conditionally. However, each of these requires a different kind of formula.