Alternating shading for lines in Crystal Reports

Here is a new Crystal Reports tip from the Flexible Solutions GP Reports newsletter.  I have added an example with some screenshots to better illustrate.

Want to spruce up your Crystal report a little by adding alternate color shading to the lines? Here is how. (Click on the screenshots to see them clearer.)

As an example, let’s start with a report that lists of customers fro the GP sample company:

I want to shade the alternating lines to make this a little easier to read.  Here are the steps:

• Go to Report > Section Expert
• Click on Details on the left and switch to the Color tab on the right
• Click on the formula button:

•  Copy/type the following formula in:

select RecordNumber mod 2
case 0: crWhite
case 1: color(222,222,222)

• Click Save and Close
• Click OK to close the Section Expert window

 Here are the results:

You can make the color of the shading anything you want. Crystal has colors that you can call by name, here is the list: crBlack, crMaroon, crGreen, crOlive, crNavy, crPurple, crTeal, crGray, crSilver, crRed, crLime, crYellow, crBlue, crFuchsia, crAqua, crWhite. I have found that most of these are much too dark, so I just pick my own RGB colors.

If you want to shade Group lines instead of Detail lines, change the formula to the following: 

select GroupNumber mod 2
case 0: crWhite
case 1: color(222,222,222)