Conditional formatting is formatting that
applies only under certain conditions. For example, in a report you may want
any of these formats when certain conditions are met:
Customer balances are printed in red,
if they are past due.
Dates appear in the Day, Month, Year
format, if the customer is Canadian.
A background color appears, if the
line number is odd.
Crystal Reports makes it easy to
apply conditional formatting in these and hundreds of other situations.
With absolute formatting, you follow the
"select, then apply" procedure. For conditional formatting, you follow the same
general procedure, but you go a step further and set up conditions that
determine whether or not the formatting will be applied. You specify these
conditions using simple formulas. When a conditional formatting formula is set
up, the formula overrides any fixed settings you have made in the
"Properties" view. For example, if you select the
Suppress property, then set up a conditional formula for the Suppress property,
the property will still apply only if the condition in the formula is met.
Crystal Reports enables you to
set both on and off properties and set attribute properties conditionally.
However, each of these requires a different kind of formula.