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Record Selection
Selecting records
9
156 Crystal Reports User’s Guide
Selecting records
When a field is selected to appear on a report, field values from every record
in the active table(s) are printed by default. In many cases, you may not want
to include all the values, but only a subset of those values. For example, you
may want to include:
• Records only for a specific group of customers.
• Records for a specific range of account numbers out of the total number
of records in the database.
• Values from only those records that fall within a particular date range.
Options for selecting records
Crystal Reports includes a very sophisticated formula language that you can
use to specify virtually any type of record selection. However, you may not
always need the flexibility in record selection that the formula language
provides. The Select Expert is designed for such instances.
You can select records in one of two ways:
• “Using the Select Expert” on page 157
• “Using formulas” on page 158
Once you are familiar with the Select Expert and formulas, you can use your
record selection techniques to improve the performance of your reports. For
additional performance tips and advanced record selection strategies, see
“Using enhanced record selection formulas” on page 144.
Determining which field(s) to use
When you select records, you are basing your report only on those records
that meet some conditions that you have set. You base those conditions on
the kind of information you want in the finished report.
Assume, for example, that you want a report that only shows data from
California. The challenge is to find the best way to identify those records that
come from California.
• If the table used in a report has a State or Region field, you can specify in
your request that the program use only those records in which the value
in the state field is equal to California (Region is equal to CA).
• If the table does not have a State field and you still want to report only on
California data, there may be another way to identify that data.