02 June |
How Do I Do a Sum Distinct Records in SQL Server Reporting Services? |
I have had a couple of clients recently asking the same question "How Do I Do a Sum Distinct Records in a SQL Server Reporting Services Tablix/Matrix?
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22 May |
How Do I Sort Alphanumerical Field Values in SQL Server Reporting Services 2019? |
I recently had a client contact me with an issue sorting a alphanumerical field with in SQL Reporting Services Tablix object.
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05 November |
How Do Preset Export Options in Crystal Reports 2016? |
During a recent Crystal Reports Writing project, the user was running their reports from a 3rd party crystal report viewer to export their reports
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14 October |
When is a zero not a zero?????? |
I have had a number of clients recently contacting me with conditional formulas not behaving as expected, when testing for zeros.
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10 September |
Why is my Crystal Reports being displayed unaligned? |
A Crystal Reports client contacted us recently with a mis-alignment of their reports on some if their machines, when previewed or exported to PDF
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12 August |
A Common Question w.r.t. Crystal Reports |
When working with clients who have issues with their Crystal Reports report, the first question I ask is what version was the report written in?
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18 June |
Why is Hide Duplicates in SQL Server Reporting Services Not Working? |
A client contacted me recently, whose report displayed an extra blank line when hiding duplicates in the SSRS report
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22 April |
A handy tip to copying your Crystal Reports Crosstab values to Microsoft Excel |
I was just playing around with moving some Crystal Reports crosstab data, and came across this useful titbit
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09 April |
What's this GetChar Function in SQL Server Reporting Services? |
During a recent SSRS report writing project, I am came across this GetChar function.
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04 March |
How Do I Add an Extra Blank Page to my Crystal Reports? |
During a recent Crystal Reports training session, one of the delegates asked "How do I add a blank extra page at the end of the report?"
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18 February |
Why is my VAL function not working in SQL Server Reporting Services? |
I recently had a client contact me, because the VAL function in the report was not working properly
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21 January |
How Do I create a bespoke NoRowsMessage? |
I had a client contact us asking "How do I create an customised NoRowsMessage?
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04 December |
How Do I Find Missing Correlating Data? |
I had a client contact me asking how they could find the sales agents who had not made any sales
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19 November |
Why Does my PDF Export have Additional Blank Pages in SQL Server Reporting Services? |
One of the most common questions clients ask me when exporting SQL Server Reporting Services reports to PDF is "Why are there extra blank pages?"
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15 October |
Why is My SSRS Reports Still Showing the Old Data, even after the Stored Procedure has been Updated? |
One of my clients contacted me with a problem that when the stored procedures was updated the reports still returned the original data.
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17 September |
How Do I Add Stars to my SQL Server Reporting Services Reports? |
Over the last few months I have has a number of clients, asking "How Do I Add Stars to my SSRS reports?"
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17 August |
How Do I Exclude Blank Lines in Concatenated Fields in SQL Server Reporting Services |
During a SQL Server Reporting Services consultancy session, the client asked "How do I exclude blank lines in a concatenated address field?"
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11 July |
How Do I Hide Parameters in a Crystal Reports 3rd Party Viewer |
A client contacted me asking "How do I hide parameters in a Crystal Reports 3rd Party viewer?"
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10 May |
What's this BIGMUL function in SQL Reporting Services? |
You know when you come across a function in any application, and it leaves you scratching your head?
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29 March |
A Question of Rounding in SQL Server Reporting Services |
Over the last few months, clients keep on asking me the difference between the SSRS Ceiling() and Floor() functions.
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19 December |
How Do I Quickly Select Multiple Crystal Report Objects, except Lines and Boxes? |
I a currently in the middle of writing a beast of a Crystal Report, with multiple fields, boxes and lines, in multiple sections, and needed a way of efficiently selecting these objects.
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14 November |
How Do I Generate an SQL Server Reporting Services Report List |
I was recently started a SQL Reporting Services writing project, and the first thing I needed to do was to carry out an audit of their current reports.
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17 October |
How Do I Sort a Memo Field in Crystal Reports? |
During a recent consultancy, a client asked "How does I sort a memo field?"
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06 July |
First and Last Days of Time Periods in Crystal Reports |
Here's just a quick blog post for calculating the start and end dates of calendar periods in Crystal Reports
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19 May |
When is a Carriage Returm not a Carriage Return in Crystal Reports? |
I know this sounds like the start of a joke, but I recently found out that not all carriage returns are equal.
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04 April |
How Do I Work with Optional Parameters in Crystal Reports? |
During a recent Crystal Reports consultancy, the clients asked "How do they work with the Optional Parameter option?"
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24 March |
What's the difference between Current Date and Data Date? |
Recently, I have been asked by delegates on my training courses at lot, about the difference between Current Date and Data Date.
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13 February |
What's this ExtractString Function in Crystal Reports? |
So I was just playing a Crystal Reports over the weekend, like you do, and I came across this function ExtractString
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13 February |
Where's my DataSet Panel in SSRS designer gone??? |
I have had a number of clients, contacting me with regards to the DataSet panel in SSRS design view disappearing
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04 January |
How Do I Remove the Extra Pages on a Cross Tab Report in Crystal Reports? |
When you create a Cross Tab in Crystal Reports, you may notice all the extra pages when run it.
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08 December |
What is the FIX function in SQL Services Reporting Services? |
So I was just playing around in SQL Reporting Services 2008 looking at some of the functions, when I came across the FIX function
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20 October |
An issue with Exporting Crosstab to Excel from Crystal Reports |
A client of mine recently contacted me about an issue when then exported a Conditionally Formatted Cross-tab to Excel.
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13 July |
How Do I Only Display the Page Headings on the First Page in SQL Reporting Services 2008 R2? |
During a recent SQL Reporting Services Consultancy session with one of my clients, they wanted to know how to only display the page headings on the first page of the report
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24 May |
How Do I Stop Images Scaling |
This was a bit of a funny one which had a client scratching their heads "How Do I Stop Images stored in a table scaling in Crystal Reports?"
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13 April |
Custom DLLs in Crystal Reports |
One of our clients was migrating their Crystal Report 7 to Crystal Reports 2011 while upgrading their SQL Servers, and their custom DLL stopped being recognised.
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13 March |
What is the function of CurrentFieldValue in Crystal eports? |
During a recent Crystal Reports training session one of the delegates asked "What is the advantage of using the CurrentFieldValue?"
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13 March |
A Question of Rounding |
One of my clients contacted me about a rounding issue in Crystal Reports
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13 February |
How Do I ensure my Conditional Suppression works in Crystal Reports? |
During one of my consultancy session, I had a client, whoso conditional suppression formula returned unexpected formatting, when the report ran.
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14 December |
How Do I Calculate Averages in SQL Server Reporting Services? |
During a recent SQL Server Reporting Services report writing projectI noticed that the inbuilt Avg SSRS function returned the wrong value.
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13 October |
How Do I write a percentage formula in SQL |
During a recent training session, a number of delegates asked how do they write a percentage formula, that does not result in 0.
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14 September |
How Do I Calculate the Last Friday of the Previous Month using SQL |
During a recent SQL Server Reporting Services report writing project I needed to write some SQL to calculate the last Friday of the previous month for report parameters
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04 August |
How Do I Create a Banded Report with Grouped Tables |
During a recent training course a delegate asked "How do I create a banded report in a grouped table?"
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28 July |
How Do I Calculate the 1st Monday of the Previous Month using SQL |
During a recent SQL Server Reporting Services report writing project I needed to write some SQL to calculate the 1st Monday of the previous month for report parameters
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09 June |
How Do I Convert Text to Sentence Case in Crystal Reports? |
During a recent Crystal Reports training session, one of the delegates asked "How to display a text field with various cases to sentence case?"
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01 April |
How Do I Display Form Letter Addresses without Spaces in Crystal Reports? |
Over the last couple of months, we have had a number of clients asking "How Do I remove the spaces when creating addresses in form letters?"
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13 December |
How Do I Find Out the version of SQL Server Service Packs have been Installed |
A common question that I have to ask my clients, is "What version of SQL Server Service are you working on and what Service Packs have been installed?"
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23 September |
How Do I Automatically Refresh Reports in SQL Reporting Server 2008 R2? |
During a recent SQL Server Reporting Services Consultancy the client asked "How do I get SQL Server Reporting Services 2008 R2 to automatically refresh the report when viewed within Report Manager?"
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13 June |
How Do I Display Zeros instead of Blanks in a Matrix in SSRS 2008? |
During a recent SQL Server Reporting Services 2008 report writing project, the client wanted all the spaces of the matrix, to be replaced with zeros.
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13 May |
How Do I Sort by Financial Year? |
During a recent SQL Server Reporting Services 2008 report writing project, my client wanted the budget vs actuals charts and matrix months sorted by financial year instead of calendar year.
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13 March |
How Do I Change the Bar Width in SSRS 2008? |
During a recent SQL Server Reporting Services 2008 training session one of the delegates asked "How Do I Change the Bar Width of the Bar Chart?"
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13 January |
How Do I Deal with Null Values in Address Formula Fields in SQL? |
During a recent training session on of the delegates asked "How do I stop Null addresses, if one of the address fields is Null in the formula"?
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03 July |
Tip: Making all the Page Header Section Heights the same in SQL Reporting Services 2008 |
A number of clients have asked "How do I ensure that all the page headers of the report are the same height in SQL Server Reporting Services 2008?"
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23 May |
How Do I Display Double Lines in Tablix Items in SQL Reporting Services? |
During a recent SQL Reporting Services 2008 (SSRS 2008) report design project, the client needed to display the totals within a Tablix report item with bottom double line border
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21 May |
How Do I Get Sub-Reports to work in SQL Reporting Services 2008 R2? |
Over the last couple of weeks I have had a number of clients ask me the same thing when creating reports with sub reports in SQL Server Reporting Services 2008 R2, which is how do I get them to work?
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29 April |
How Do I Ensure the Latest Data is Being Returned in BIDS SQL Reporting Services 2008? |
Recently I have had a number of clients contacting me due to their reports displaying the wrong data, when the report is previewed in BIDS SQL Server Reporting Services 2008
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09 April |
How Do I Remove the Image Grey Background in Crystal Reports XI? |
During a recent report design consultancy, in preview the images was fine, but when the report was printed the images on the page printed with a grey background.
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15 November |
How Do I Draw a Box Around Groups in Crystal Reports 2008? |
During a number of recent Crystal Reports 2008 training sessions, delegates have asked the same question: "How do I draw a box around the groups of the report in Crystal Reports 2008?"
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11 October |
How Do I Change the Database and/or the Table the Report is based on in Crystal Reports 2008? |
Over the last couple of weeks I have had a number of clients asking me how they can change the datasource and/or the table that the report is based on without have to start designing the report from scratch in Crystal Reports 2008.
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16 August |
Tip: Indicators in SQL Reporting Services (SSRS) 2008 |
Over the last couple of weeks a number of clients have had issues getting their indicators to work in SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) 2008.
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13 June |
How Do I Display the Ordinal of the Date in Crystal Reports XI? |
During a recent Crystal Reports XI training session a delegate asked, "How do I display the Date Ordinals in Superscript?"
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23 February |
The Locate Table Crystal Reports Feature |
Recently I have been working on a ERP Crystal Reports 2008 Report Design project, where most of the reports contain a large number of tables. The Locate Table feature of Crystal Reports, was an absolute god send when linking the tables together.
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03 November |
How Do I Get Crystal Reports XI to Display more Dynamic Parameter Values? |
A number of clients have recently been asking, when creating dynamic parameters in Crystal Reports XI, how do I display more than the first 1000 values.
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08 June |
How Do I Suppress Blank Fields Embedded within Text Objects in Crystal Reports? |
I was recently asked How Do I Suppress Blank Fields Embedded within Text Objects in Crystal Reports?
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29 March |
How Do I Control the Line Spacing in Crystal Reports XI? |
A client recently asked me How do I control the line spacing in text and memo fields in Crystal Reports XI?
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01 March |
How Do I Conditionally Suppress the Results of a Formula in Crystal Reports? |
I was recently asked How do I create a formula that calculates the difference, in days, between the order date and delivery date, where any value less than 1 would be hidden, in Crystal Reports?
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14 February |
Crystal Reports 2008 Clamp at Bottom of Page |
I was asked recently during a Crystal Reports 2008 training session, What does Clamp at Bottom of Page do?
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03 February |
How Do I List All the Descriptions of Tables, Views and Fields of a SQL Database? |
Recently while working with a client when they asked, How does one list all the tables and views, with their fields and descriptions of a SQL database?
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24 January |
How Do I Display Boolean Values using Symbols in Crystal Reports? |
A client recently during a Crystal Reports XI training session, asked How do I display boolean values using symbols?
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25 October |
How Do I Display the Groups Last Value in Crystal Reports? |
During a recent training session a delegate asked How do I display the last value of the group?
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11 October |
Report Bursting Indexes Anyone? |
Recently a number of clients have asked me What is Report Bursting Index, in Crystal Reports?
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26 August |
How Do I Create a Custom Report Template in SQL Reporting Services 2005? |
A client asked how does one create and use a custom designed report template in SQL Server Reporting Services 2005?
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17 August |
How Do I Find Out When a Report was Last Run in Crystal Reports? |
A client recently asked me How do I find out which reports have not been run or used within a specific timeframe, in Crystal Reports?
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11 August |
How Do I Solve the Divide by Zero Issue in SQL Server Reporting Services? |
A client of mine emailed a report, designed in SQL Server Reporting Services 2005, that when compiled produced a "Divide by Zero" error message. Here is a solution to this problem.
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03 August |
How Do I Find All the Products that Have Not Generated Sales? |
A client recently asked me How do I create an SQL statement that lists all the products that have not generated any sales, that can be used with either Crystal Reports or SQL Server Reporting Services?
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15 July |
How Do I List All the Views in an SQL Database? |
Recently while working with a client they asked, how does one list all the views within an SQL database that contains a specific field name?
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07 July |
Crystal Reports Preview Sample Feature |
Recently I was delivering a Crystal Reports training session to a client, with a large dataset and a very slow network connection. Rather than returning all the records, it would be better to return just a sample.
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30 June |
How Do I Modify the Email Hyperlink in Crystal Reports? |
Last week a client asked how can one modify the An E-mail Address mailto: hyperlink in Crystal Reports, to add additional information, such as CC, BCC, Subject and/or body of text?
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20 June |
Save time designing reports using default formatting options |
When designing reports in Crystal Reports, it is possible to save time by defining the default formatting of the report objects, including fields, text and chart objects.
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11 May |
Comments, Comments, Comments |
I am currently working on a project designing a suite of reports for a new client, using SQL Reporting Services. Obviously over time the number of reports will increase, and it is so easy to forget why the report was designed in the first place.
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26 April |
How Do I Resolve the Divide by Zero Issue in Crystal Reports? |
A client of mine emailed a report, designed in Crystal Reports XI, that when compiled produced a Divide by Zero error message. Here is a solution to this problem.
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28 February |
5 Simple Tips to Increase Performance in Crystal Reports |
One of the things clients ask me is how can we improve the processing time of our reports?
Here are 5 simple tips that can be used to increase the performance in Crystal Reports when compiling reports.
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