Hands on: Crystal Reports Add-Ins for Microsoft^Ò Excel and Access

You can now create simple reports without even launching the Crystal Report Designer. The Add-ins for Microsoft^® Excel and Access, new in Seagate Crystal Reports 8, enable you to easily create reports within familiar Excel or Access environments. A report viewer displays the report. You can then use the Crystal Report Designer or Seagate Analysis to do further editing. These reports are dynamically linked to their data so that changes to the Excel or Access file are automatically reflected in the corresponding report when refreshed.

Here, we’ll create a simple report using the Add-in for Excel. The steps for creating a report from Access are nearly identical.

Step by Step

1. Open Excel 97 or Excel 2000.

2. You first need to load the Excel Add-in. From the Tools menu, select Add-ins… to open the Add-ins dialog box.

3.  In the Add-ins dialog box, check Seagate Crystal Report Wizard and click OK. If this option does not appear in the list, click Browse… and select the file crptxls.xla in directory x:\Program Files\Seagate Software\Report Designer Component (x being the install drive) and click OK. This adds the Seagate Crystal Report Wizard to the list of Add-ins you have for Excel. Now check Seagate Crystal Report Wizard and click OK.

5.   Within Excel, open the Xtreme.xls file from x:\Program Files\Seagate Software\Crystal Reports\Samples\Databases (x being the install drive).

.  Select the Seagate Crystal Report Wizard from the Tools menu, or click  on the Standard toolbar. 

7. In the Seagate Software Report Wizard dialog box, click the box (with the dash in it) to the right of the input field. 

8.  Select a cell range containing your data from the current worksheet by highlighting the spreadsheet cells with your mouse. Click the box to the right of the text box to return to the Report Wizard once you have selected your cells.  Alternatively, you can select just a few cells and then select all the surrounding cells by clicking the “Expand the selected range automatically” button  once you have returned to the Report Wizard. The expanded range includes cells currently selected, plus those delimited by an empty row and an empty column in the worksheet.

9.  Click Create Crystal Report.

10.  The Seagate Crystal Report Wizard behaves much like the Report Expert in the Crystal Report Designer. Using the Seagate Crystal Report Wizard, you can choose the information to include in your report.  Add Country, Region, City, Customer Name, and Last Year’s Sales by clicking the >> button on the center divider. Click Next.

11.  To group the information on the report, double-click Country, then Region. Click Next.

13.  Double-click Last Year’s Sales.

14.  Select Sum from the list below the Summarized Fields box.

15.  Now, in the For the Group box, select Region and repeat the last two steps.  Click Next.

16.  The next screen prompts you to sort groups. Accept the defaults and click Next.

17.  To select a subset of information to display on the report, double-click Country. An additional drop-down list appears below it. Scroll through the drop-down list and select is one of and then enter the countries Canada, England, Australia, Japan and USA in the box below the drop-down list. Press Enter to add each country to the list. Click Next.

18.  Name your report Sales by Region and specify Shading as your report style. Click Next.

19.  Select Preview and click Finish.

• Search for the first occurrence of a value
• Zoom
• Refresh
• Page forward and Page back
• Print 

Note: You can also choose to edit the report with the Seagate Crystal Report Designer or analyze the report with Seagate Analysis instead of previewing it.