## About the report design environment

### Design tab

When working with Seagate Crystal Reports, you will probably use the Design tab more than any other part of the program.

The Design tab is the place you do most of the initial work when creating a report. It designates and labels the various sections of the report. You can do the initial formatting, place objects in the sections where you want them to appear, specify sorting, grouping, and totaling needs, and so forth.

The Design tab provides a very efficient environment for designing a report because you work in the tab with data representations, not with data itself. When a field is placed on the report, the program uses a frame to identify the field on the tab; it does not retrieve the data. Thus, you can add and delete fields and other objects, move them around, set up complex formulas, and more, without tying up the computer or network resources needed to gather the data.

The report created in the Design tab is a kind of virtual report; it has the structure and instructions for creating the final report, but it is not the report itself. To turn the Design tab report into a final report or into a report that you can fine-tune, you "just add data." You do this whenever you preview the report, print it, or output it in any other way. The actual data will now appear in the report.

Seagate Software, Inc. http://www.seagatesoftware.com Please send comments to: techpubs@seagatesoftware.com