Software

Ask something
Question Locked

Crystal Reports - Problems when encounters a NULL

0 helpful
4 replies

by jojoberry82

Closed to new repliesThis discussion is closed. It stays readable, but it takes no new replies.

Hello -
I am very new to crystal reports and I am having problems figuring out why my entire report appears blank (except for field headings) when it encounters a NULL value in a field that is linked to another table.

I've checked the "Convert Database NULL values to Default" option under General Settings in Report Options but that does not seem to handle this problem.

Like I mentioned this problem is specific only to fields that are linked to other tables. I've also tried using an unbound string, so that I can try using an if,then,else logic along with the isNULL() function. - No Luck

Has anyone else bumped into this crazyness ?

Thank you,
Shawn Owens

4 replies

by tony hopkinson

the query that's reporting the data, than crystal reports converting it into something printable.

If you join say customers and orders only customers with orders will be printed.

This is the standard join called an inner join.

If you want to print out all customers whether they have an order or not, you have to convert it to an outer join. There will be some option in CR to give you this.

Hit outer join in the help, it should tell you how.

by bruce.dimon

I always use the ISNULL in my Crystal Reports queries on any field that can be NULL or is part of an outer join. This bug, excuse me, FEATURE is the main reason why.

There's another reason to always use the ISNULL for Crystal Reports. Printing NULL or even blanks is rarely the best looking thing to put on paper. Instead of blanks, use "N/A", "not available" or "Unknown." After all, those words are a more accurate description of the data state than " "

by master_techie

Have you tried to grab the field value into a Formula? In there, you can decide what to display if the field value is NULL, or if the length of the field value is >0. Because EMPTY and NULL are two different values.

This discussion is closed to new replies.