Crystal Reports - my formula works, but when repeated in more than 1 subreport, all records disappear

Question

I'm not a developer but I'm supposed to create a report by C.R., so excuse me in advance if it is an obvious question for you, and please keep in mind that I'm a real beginner.

I have a job composed of 3 different workings (3 out of 5, which is the maximum workings I can have for a job). In my SQL database, the table.field corresponding to those workings is job.phase, so when I put, in my report details, the field "job.phase", I get 3 rows for that job.

The point is that my report printout always has to show 5 different text objects (one below the other), corresponding to the descriptions of all the 5 possible table.field-records, and a 'X' should appear next to text objects when each one of the workings listed there is a part of my job (otherwise nothing should appear).

What I have done is the following: - created a subreport containing the "job.phase" field - put it near my first text object - specified in my subreport the following "show string" formula: if job.phase = 'working1' then 'X' else '' and it works: a X appears if working1 is part of my job, nothing appears if working1 is not part of my job. Then I have created 4 subreports more, equal to the first one, and specified the same for job.phase = working2, working3, working4 and working5, BUT, after doing that, no X is shown (even though working 1, 2 and 3 are part of my job)...

Is there anybody who can help me, please? It's so frustrating...

Answer 1

Using subreports for something like this is overkill for what you're trying to do and could be causing any number of things to behave badly. I'd recommend you abandon that idea. Here's how I would do it:

The first thing you'll want to do is group by job (if more than one will appear in your report, which I'll assume it will). The Group Footer section is where you can display the labels and Xs. You'll need to create 5 formulas as you did before if {job.phase} = "working1" then "X", one for each of the phases/workings. Drop all 5 of those formulas into the Details section of the report and then suppress that entire section so that it doesn't display.

To show the Xs, you can use a Maximum summary in the Group Footer for each of the five formulas you created. To do this, right-click each of the formulas in turn, select Insert -> Summary. Choose Maximum as the summary, and "Group 1" (Your job ID or whatever field you are using to group the job) as the Location. That will insert a field into the Group Footer that will display an X when that particular working is specified for the job, otherwise it won't display anything. Move them to display next to the appropriate label/text field and you're done.