Question about Table Selection and Linking

[jkeis]

Hi all,

I work for a small custom homebuilding company that uses the Timberline Accouting Suite with Crystal Reports 10. I'm trying to make a few custom reports but am having some trouble doing what I want.

I'm trying to write a report, that for any given job will display each cost code for a job, with it's original estimated price, any change orders posted to that cost code, and the finalized estimated price.

The problem is that the cost code and estimate data is in a different table than the change order data. The field linking that I had to do to properly associate change orders with the cost codes they correspond to is causing cost codes that don't have any change orders posted to them not to show on the report at all. If I remove the change order stuff from the report, I get every cost code, sorted by job (which is what I want), but if I put the change order stuff back in, any cost codes that have no change orders are removed.

Is there any way that I can make this report show EVERY cost code, and show change order data only for the cost codes that have change orders? I've had no luck trying to do this with selection formulas and it seems to hide things no matter how I do the field linking (or it just breaks the report). Thanks.

[jkeis]

I think I figured this out. I had to use "Left Outer Join" links instead of the default. Now a hopefully much simpler question: How can I shade alternating sections (or alternating groups would work fine too).

[gjack72]

To alternate shade every other group.
Right click on the group section, select section expert, then choose color.
Click the x+2 button and paste this formula.


If remainder(GroupNumber,2) = 1
Then CrSilver
Else CrNoColor

To alternate shade every other record in the details section change GroupNumber to RecordNumber.

GJ

[jkeis]

This is helpful, but not exactly what I want. I suppose record isn't the right term, since each line is apparently a "record" regardless of what's on it. I want each cost code to have alternating shading.

After playing around a bit I was able to get it working by making my cost codes a subgroup of the first group and using the GroupRecord version of your formula though. Thanks a lot.