Crystal Reports 10 Fundamentals

Picture of Crystal Reports 10 Fundamentals
Quick Facts
  • Delivery Method Online
  • Professional Certificate
  • 24hrs Suggested Study Time
  • 3 Months Access
  • Tutor Support
  • Study On Any Device
  • 6056 Students

Make the points you want to make by converting raw database or accounting information into impressive and meaningful reports.

Discover the secret techniques pros use to produce handsome reports that clearly convey almost any type of information to any type of audience. This class will help you unleash the hidden power of Crystal Reports to present database or accounting information in a way that unmistakably communicates the points you want to make.

If you have information you need to intelligently communicate to others, but cannot do so because it lies buried in your database, accounting program, or other data source, you need Crystal Reports--and this course.

It doesn't matter whether you need to develop a quick-turnaround report that your boss needed yesterday or an elaborate financial report for your company's annual report. Crystal Reports can handle it all, and your instructor will show you how.

You'll discover how to extract the data you want your report to include, how to sort it into the order you want, how to group related information together, and how to include totals for groups of figures or for the entire report. All the while, you'll gain valuable firsthand experience with the process of creating, running, and publishing polished, professional quality reports.

NOTE: If you have Crystal Reports XI, 2008, or 2011, then you should enroll in ""Crystal Reports Fundamentals"" rather than this course. Please check the Requirements for further information.

Courses are delivered to you through expertly executed lessons, online instruction and interaction with like-minded students. Our courses are designed to deliver all of the benefits of studying in a classroom whilst giving you the flexibility to study at a time and place to suit your needs. You can access your classroom 24/7 from any device with an internet connection.

This course has a 3 month duration. You'll complete comprehensive lessons, quizzes and assignments before submitting your final exam at the end of the course to achieve your certificate. Courses must be completed within the 3 month access period.

Crystal Reports is the world's most popular software tool for creating reports based on data stored in databases. It's popular because of its power and flexibility, which will help you create reports that communicate the information you want to convey to the people you want to convey it to. In our first lesson, you'll learn why it's important to find out everything you need to know about the report you want to create before you even launch the Crystal Reports application. This advance planning gives you a much better chance of creating a report that achieves your objectives.

In this lesson, we'll hit the ground running and create a Crystal report from scratch. You'll learn how to connect to any of several different types of data sources, pull data from the data source, and place it into a report. Then you'll learn how easy Crystal Reports makes giving your report a professional appearance with a report header, page headers, page footers, and a report footer, in addition to column headings and the data itself. You'll also learn how to arrange all these items on a page for maximum visual impact.

Once you know how to pull data from a database and display it in a basic report, the next step is pulling data from multiple tables and displaying only the data you want, filtering out any irrelevant information. In this lesson, you'll learn how to perform all those functions, including building reports that allow the user to decide at runtime what to display. In effect, you can build one report that serves the purpose of multiple reports.

Displaying the information in a database is one thing—displaying it in a way that communicates effectively is another. One important way to enhance communication is to organize the data in a meaningful way. In today's lesson, you'll learn how to sort a report's data and how to group related data items together. You'll learn how to summarize numerical data with group totals and obtain an overall grand total. We'll also look into Crystal Reports' drilldown capability, which allows your report readers to use a simple mouse click to access suppressed details of a specific data group.

In this lesson, you'll dive into the details of the various report sections. We'll look at the Section Expert, which is your major tool for selecting options that control the appearance and the function of the various sections of a report. We'll also explore how to create a multicolumn report, most commonly used for printing mailing labels.

Today, you'll get hands-on experience formatting a report. We'll practice using absolute formatting, a feature that can dynamically adjust the appearance of your report based on the data it contains. We'll look at a number of formatting options that Crystal Reports offers to help you give your report just the look you want. By including Report Alerts in a report, for instance, you can guarantee that the person viewing the report will see and acknowledge anything that you consider to be of high importance. A report template is a great way to achieve a consistent appearance across a family of reports. We'll practice using both these options and more in this lesson.

Crystal Reports can do more than just display the data you select from your data source. It can also show correlations between related categories of data items using the Cross-Tab Object. You can show such correlations across the entire data set or within a selected group of data items. As usual, Crystal Reports provides considerable flexibility in how it presents the cross-tab data to users. In this lesson, you'll learn what the options are and how to use them.

You'll often need to create a report based on some, but not all, of the data in a database. For example, a sales manager may want to look only at the purchase records of her top five customers. Alternatively, she may want to view the performance of her bottom 10 salespeople. Crystal Reports makes it easy to produce such reports, as well as others that are selective about what they display. In this lesson, you'll create such targeted reports that make it easy for managers to make informed decisions.

You can make your reports dynamic, sensitive to what's happening at runtime, by using Crystal Reports formulas and control structures, and you'll find out how in this lesson. With formulas, you can operate on data and put the result into your report. You can save time and effort by including one or more of the predefined functions in your formulas. You can even create your own custom functions, save them, and use them both now and in the future. These facilities give you the flexibility to produce a sophisticated custom report written from scratch with a programming language such as Visual Basic or C#, but with much less time and effort.

Crystal Reports gives you the ability to embed one report inside another. The two reports can be related in some way, or they could be totally unrelated. As long as you have a reason for displaying both reports at once, you can do it, and you'll find out how in today's lesson. An alternative to embedding a subreport within a main report is embedding a hyperlink to the subreport, so we'll practice embedding subreports in this lesson, too.

In this lesson, we'll explore Crystal Reports' wide offering of charts and maps that can add visual dimension to the display of information in a report. For the visual learners in your target audience, charts and maps may be far better than columns of numbers at getting your point across. Today, you'll learn how to choose a chart type that best conveys the information you want to emphasize. You'll find out how to use color, font, scale, legends, and titles to help you highlight trends in the data or data points that fall outside the expected range.

After you've created a report, you need to distribute it. Crystal Reports gives you several convenient distribution options, and we'll explore them all in our final lesson. We'll talk about print and fax options, as well as exporting a report to any of a number of popular file formats, and transmitting it to the people who should read it. You'll learn how to post the report on your organization's intranet or the World Wide Web, then we'll discuss distributing reports via Crystal Enterprise's Crystal Reports Viewer.

Allen Taylor

Allen Taylor

Allen G. Taylor is a 30-year veteran of the computer industry and the author of 28 computer-related books, including "Crystal Reports 2008 For Dummies," "Database Development For Dummies" and "SQL For Dummies." He has been teaching computer course... Read more

Read Allen Taylor's Profile

Frequently Asked Questions

Once you've made the payment, we'll send you a confirmation email with a link to start your course. Feel free to get started whenever you're ready!

You'll have 3 months access to your course. In that time you are free to study at your own pace. The course duration is 24 hours.

Online learning is a flexible way to study that fits around your schedule, giving you the freedom to learn at your own pace from anywhere in the world. You'll have 3 months to complete the course and can take the multiple-choice questions and final exam whenever it suits you.

If you need help, you can contact us anytime. You can also join the discussion area where you can interact with other students. The discussion area for each lesson is open for the entire duration of the course.

Of course! We offer a 7-day money back guarantee. As long as you haven't completed the course, you can get a full refund within 7 days of enrolling.

We do not offer extensions or transfers for this self-paced course. However, you will have 3 months to complete the course, and if you need to cancel within the first 10 days of enrolment, we offer a money back guarantee.

The Learning Environment

From the moment that you enrol in the Crystal Reports 10 Fundamentals you will become an integral part of our learning community. You'll find yourself with the freedom to learn at a speed that suits you, on any device, from anywhere in the world. Achieving your career goals no longer has to mean compromising family and work commitments.

Our Values

Learn At Your Own Pace

We believe in personalised learning. That's why we provide all the tools and support you need to succeed at your own pace. With flexible learning, you'll stay motivated and retain more information. Plus, you can balance your studies with work and family commitments to make your dreams a reality.

We Won't Break The Bank

Education should be accessible to anyone who wants to learn. That's why we offer some of the most competitive prices in the industry with payments plans for just $25 per week. Investing in your future is a smart choice and doesn’t have to break the bank.

Industry-Led Courses

There's no better way to learn than from experts with years of experience in your field. That's why each of our 200+ industry-led courses are designed to give you a real-life perspective on your industry. With our expert mentors, you'll learn from people who have a wealth of knowledge and experience, and who are passionate about sharing it with you.

Get The Personal Support You Deserve

At Vibe Learning, we're real people who are dedicated to providing you with personal support every step of the way. Our industry experts are not only professional and knowledgeable but also incredibly passionate about sharing their expertise with you. With their guidance, you'll gain invaluable insights and practical knowledge to help you succeed.

Adobe Acrobat X Fundamentals Online Course | Vibe Learning
 

Adobe Acrobat X Fundamentals

Picture of Adobe Acrobat X Fundamentals
Quick Facts
  • Delivery Method Online
  • Professional Certificate
  • 24hrs Suggested Study Time
  • 3 Months Access
  • Tutor Support
  • Study On Any Device
  • 763 Students

Learn how to use Adobe Acrobat X to create PDF files and take advantage of its many time-saving features, communication options, and forms.

If all you think Acrobat does is create PDF files, you're in for a big surprise! In this course, you'll discover how to bring together a wide range of content from dozens of programs that you can reuse and customize in Acrobat X Pro. Need to change some text? No problem. Create a new file? That's easy. Add a page from this file and an image from that file? Or add a new page? Not a big deal. You can do all that and more!

Bringing together content is just the beginning. You'll work with many features, such as backgrounds, bookmarks, and modified page sizes to help unify your documents. You'll see how to protect your work using password security, and dig into the metadata within your PDF file. You'll discover how to add more to your documents as you learn about bookmarks and links for navigation. You'll even master some JavaScript!

You'll learn how Acrobat X can automatically find and configure fields on a page to convert it to a form. Then you'll use form tracking to send your form to others to fill in and send back to you, and see how Acrobat X collects the data automatically in a specialised PDF Portfolio.

You'll also see how Acrobat X can help streamline the entire collaboration process and simplify how you conduct, control, and manage a document review cycle. You'll even find out how to work in real-time using a chat window in Acrobat X or online using a free Web conferencing room. Finally, you'll discover how to wrap a set of PDF files (and other documents, too) into a PDF Portfolio, complete with a Flash interface and display features, to create the ultimate in customised presentations.

In each lesson, you'll work with an important Acrobat X Pro feature or process using source files (available for both Mac and Windows) provided with the course. You'll soon see why Adobe Acrobat X has become the best-selling Adobe software of all time!

Courses are delivered to you through expertly executed lessons, online instruction and interaction with like-minded students. Our courses are designed to deliver all of the benefits of studying in a classroom whilst giving you the flexibility to study at a time and place to suit your needs. You can access your classroom 24/7 from any device with an internet connection.

This course has a 3 month duration. You'll complete comprehensive lessons, quizzes and assignments before submitting your final exam at the end of the course to achieve your certificate. Courses must be completed within the 3 month access period.

Imagine taking a document, a spreadsheet, an image or two, and a few slides from a presentation and then putting them all together into one file—complete with page numbers, a custom footer, and even some animation. Does it sound too good to be true? It's not! Adobe Acrobat X allows you to do all this and more. By the end of this first lesson, you'll know how to make your way around Acrobat X and set different program preferences. You'll even make your first PDF file from an image (a logo for the fictional business we'll follow through the course).

Where do new PDF files come from? To answer that question, we'll start Lesson 2 with a discussion on planning your project's workflow. You'll try out several different methods to create a PDF document using common programs including Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. You'll find out how to work with PDFMaker, a toolbar that Acrobat installs in some Microsoft programs that helps you choose settings and create PDF files automatically. You'll also work with the Adobe PDF Printer, which allows you to produce PDF files from programs that don't export them directly.

Today, instead of using PDF documents converted from many different types of files, you'll see how to add a blank page to a  PDF file. We'll try importing some text from another file, and format the text in Acrobat. Along with typing text in the page, we'll work with the editing tools to manipulate the content on the page and add some graphics.

Mixing and matching—moving pages from one document to another—is a common way to edit PDF files. Acrobat X Pro offers a number of techniques for combining and changing page content. You'll start today with simple files, and then you'll see how to add and delete pages, as well as learn specialized ways to slip a new page into a document without disturbing any of the elements added to the page, such as links or bookmarks. You'll combine documents (and even specific pages from documents) into one PDF document, and you'll find out how to resize or crop pages so that they all match. You'll learn about metadata—the information Acrobat X stores about a document. Finally, you'll discover how to add password protection that lets you specify whether users can print or use contents from your files.

It's one thing to bring together content from different types of files. It's quite another to make the content look like it belongs together! In this lesson, you'll learn about Acrobat features that help make your document look more uniform. You'll work with backgrounds and watermarks that can be either text or graphics. You'll see how to use headers and footers that you can customize using your own text, choices of fonts, colors, and so on. You'll also use the Snapshot tool to create a new PDF document from a page segment. By the end of this lesson, you'll be able to easily make all your documents look put together, whether they started out as two files or 10!

When you work with a table of contents in Acrobat and many other programs, you click a link on the page to take you to a certain part of the document. But then how do you get back to the table of contents to find another topic? Acrobat X solves that problem by using <em>bookmarks</em>. Today you'll learn about building and displaying bookmarks in a separate pane that stays visible while the file is open. You'll discover different ways to create bookmarks and customize their appearance to match your document. Then we'll take a look at adding attachments to your PDF document. If you've ever had to send someone an email and had trouble remembering if you sent all the necessary attachments, you'll like this feature. &nbsp;We'll wind up the lesson looking at some ways to make your files more compact.

Everyone knows how to use links on a webpage: Just click them to get to the linked page. In this lesson, you'll learn about using links in a PDF file. You'll start working with Acrobat JavaScript&mdash;and you don't need to be a programmer to use it&mdash;to add multiple links and work with custom actions. Like Web links, links in Acrobat can open another PDF document, show another page, or send an email. Next, you'll find out about linking to webpages from a PDF file and downloading a webpage to create or add to a document right in Acrobat. And we won't just talk about text links&mdash;you'll also create a link from an image.

Did you know that Acrobat X includes an Artificial Intelligence module? While it can't perform any science fiction magic, it can look at a document, decide where you'd like to have form fields, and then add and name the fields for you automatically. Today you'll see how it works with PDF forms, also called <I>AcroForms</I>. You'll learn about using the Form Wizard to produce a form for you, and then we'll look at some ways to add more form fields. You'll have a chance to calculate prices for different products in the form you create and even build a button that changes its appearance when you click it.

Collaborating on a document—sharing it with others and gathering their feedback—is one of the most popular uses of Acrobat. In this lesson, you discover how to use common commenting tools and customize the program to make it simpler for you to work. We'll go through each group of tools and check out the corresponding group of commenting preferences along the way. You'll first learn about Sticky Notes and customizing how you view comments. Next, you'll use the Highlights and Callouts and decide how and where you like to read the comment contents. We'll finish by trying out Stamp comments and making a custom stamp.

Once you've learned to add and configure comments, you need something to do with them. So today you'll work with a document review. You'll see how to start a shared review, send email invitations, and work online at Acrobat.com. You'll learn how to set up and manage a review, including different ways to work with comments.

In this lesson, we'll take your collaboration skills to the next level. We'll start by adding another type of form field to our form, then you'll discover how to distribute the form you created in an earlier lesson. Along the way, you'll see how to use Tracker, an automated feature that monitors your form's distribution process. Acrobat X Pro also includes a PDF Portfolio feature that you'll work with as you collect form results. The PDF Portfolio includes some tools that let you filter and sort your data and export it to other programs. You'll also see how to create an Excel spreadsheet from the form data you collect. Then you'll find out how to work in real time with others using Collaborate Live, and see how to work online in your own ConnectNow Web conferencing space.

Just when you think you couldn't possibly learn any more ways to combine and break down documents in Acrobat, we'll talk about Portfolios! We'll start by preparing the files for the final Portfolio project. You'll find out how to split a document into several parts using a couple of different methods, and then see how to automate some preparation details used actions. Once we've prepared the files, we'll start a PDF Portfolio. Then you'll try out different appearance features, add some images, and work with color schemes. Finally, you'll learn how to manage the content of your PDF Portfolio, such as adding folders and moving files. By the end of this lesson, you'll be ready to use Acrobat to combine, create, and collaborate on documents like never before!

Donna Baker

Donna Baker

Donna Baker is a freelance graphic designer and author of many books on design software and Web design. She produces custom tutorials, videos, and infographics for Adobe TV. She's also an Adobe Certified Expert and Adobe Community Expert. As you m... Read more

Read Donna Baker's Profile

Frequently Asked Questions

Once you've made the payment, we'll send you a confirmation email with a link to start your course. Feel free to get started whenever you're ready!

You'll have 3 months access to your course. In that time you are free to study at your own pace. The course duration is 24 hours.

Online learning is a flexible way to study that fits around your schedule, giving you the freedom to learn at your own pace from anywhere in the world. You'll have 3 months to complete the course and can take the multiple-choice questions and final exam whenever it suits you.

If you need help, you can contact us anytime. You can also join the discussion area where you can interact with other students. The discussion area for each lesson is open for the entire duration of the course.

Of course! We offer a 7-day money back guarantee. As long as you haven't completed the course, you can get a full refund within 7 days of enrolling.

We do not offer extensions or transfers for this self-paced course. However, you will have 3 months to complete the course, and if you need to cancel within the first 10 days of enrolment, we offer a money back guarantee.

The Learning Environment

From the moment that you enrol in the Adobe Acrobat X Fundamentals you will become an integral part of our learning community. You'll find yourself with the freedom to learn at a speed that suits you, on any device, from anywhere in the world. Achieving your career goals no longer has to mean compromising family and work commitments.

Our Values

Learn At Your Own Pace

We believe in personalised learning. That's why we provide all the tools and support you need to succeed at your own pace. With flexible learning, you'll stay motivated and retain more information. Plus, you can balance your studies with work and family commitments to make your dreams a reality.

We Won't Break The Bank

Education should be accessible to anyone who wants to learn. That's why we offer some of the most competitive prices in the industry with payments plans for just $25 per week. Investing in your future is a smart choice and doesn’t have to break the bank.

Industry-Led Courses

There's no better way to learn than from experts with years of experience in your field. That's why each of our 200+ industry-led courses are designed to give you a real-life perspective on your industry. With our expert mentors, you'll learn from people who have a wealth of knowledge and experience, and who are passionate about sharing it with you.

Get The Personal Support You Deserve

At Vibe Learning, we're real people who are dedicated to providing you with personal support every step of the way. Our industry experts are not only professional and knowledgeable but also incredibly passionate about sharing their expertise with you. With their guidance, you'll gain invaluable insights and practical knowledge to help you succeed.

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