The University of Toledo

Web Report Library

Viewing Reports

Once you choose a report in BusinessObjects Enterprise, you can view it in its entirety. To view the report in a Crystal report viewer, either click the report title or click "View Latest Instance."

Report viewing activities

Depending on which Crystal report viewer you are using, there are a number of activities you can carry out when reviewing a report. For more information on what activities are available in each browser.

Refresh

    Click Refresh to obtain the most up-to-date report data from the report’s data source. You need to have the proper rights to run this report and the report must contain the necessary data source information before you can refresh the report.

Find

    Click Find to launch the Search dialog box. You can type the search criteria you want to find in the report.

Show/Hide Group Tree

    Click Show/Hide Group Tree to show or hide the report’s group tree. When the group tree is displayed, you can use it to navigate through your report’s data.

Drill down

    You can drill down on report data to show the data beneath charts and summarized groups. Single-click the chart or summarized data to see a drilldown view.

Zoom

    Select a magnification factor from the drop-down list to zoom in or out on a report.

Scroll through pages

    Use the scroll bars or the Go to Next Page/Go to Previous Page options to move through the pages of a report. Go to First Page and Go to Last Page options are also available.

Set parameters

    When you launch a report that contains data selection parameters, or when you refresh its data, you are prompted to select a value. The values and/or value ranges you can choose differ from report to report, depending on how the parameter was created in Crystal Reports.

Printing reports

Successful instances of reports can be printed. Depending on which Crystal report viewer you use, the steps detailed below may be different; however, the general principles remain the same. (If there are on-screen instructions provided, follow those, rather than the steps below.)

  1. On the viewer’s toolbar, click Print Report.
    The Print dialog box appears.
  2. In the Print range area, select all pages or a specific range of pages.
  3. In the Copies area, select the number of copies for the report.
  4. If you select the Collate check box, the report prints each page in order.
    For example, if you are printing two copies of a report with four pages, your report prints page one, two, three, and four of the first copy, and then prints the second copy.
  5. Click OK.  The Printing Records dialog box appears displaying the progress of your print job.

Exporting reports

Successful instances of reports can be exported to several reporting formats, as well as to popular word processor and spreadsheet formats. This makes the distribution of information easier. For example, you may want to export data that predicts sales trends to an Excel spreadsheet before you email it to the sales team.

Tip:

  • You can select the page range for the report that you wish to export.
  • For reports in which you can drill down, you can export the drill-down view.

Format types

Business Objects Enterprise provides you with several export format types.

They include:

  • Crystal Reports
  • Microsoft Excel
  • Microsoft Excel (Data only)
  • Microsoft Word
  • Rich Text Format
  • Adobe Acrobat

Note:

  • When you export a report to a file format other than Crystal Reports format (.rpt), you  may lose some or all of the formatting that appears in your report. However, the program attempts to preserve as much formatting as the export format allows.
  • The difference between Excel and Excel (Data only) is that Excel attempts to preserve the look and feel of your original report.
  • The Crystal Reports Offline Viewer provides other formats for exporting.