Modifying Chart and Map Properties

After you have successfully created a chart or map and placed it on your report, you have a number of post-creation editing options at your disposal within the Crystal Reports Designer. Both charts and maps provide a number of easy-to-use methods to re-visit and edit your charts or maps. Several of the most common editing methods are listed in the following sections.

Modifying Chart Properties

After a chart has been created and placed on your report, you can perform numerous post-creation edits by right-clicking on the chart object while in the Preview mode. From the Chart menu that appears, you have both the ability to revisit the Chart Expert and use a number of more finely tuned post-creation editing tools, including the powerful and flexible Chart Option functions.

With version 9 of Crystal Reports, increased capabilities to perform numerous in-place edits to chart objects have been added. In the past, this functionality was mostly accessible from a separate tab called the Chart Analyzer. This tab is no longer available. An example is that you can grab a chart title (or other object) and move its location or change its font directly in-place in version 9.

Chart Options

The Chart Option menu choice enables you to fine-tune the look of your charts at a very granular level not available in the standard Chart Expert. Although a detailed examination of these charting options is outside the scope of this text, you are encouraged to explore the variety of chart customizations and formatting options exposed through this functionality if the standard chart creation process does not meet your exact requirements.

You will find separate and advanced charting help instructions for these granular options available through the help button present on all the dialog boxes accessed from the Chart Options menu. This advanced help is provided by 3D Graphics the third party responsible for the charting in Crystal Reports.

Size and Position

This option enables you to identify very specific x and y coordinates in addition to height and width measurements for the involved chart. Charts can also be dynamically resized and repositioned by grabbing any of the sizing handles that appear on the frame of the chart after it is selected.

Modifying Map Properties

After a map has been created and placed on your report, you can perform numerous post-creation edits by right-clicking on the map object while in the Preview mode. From the Map menu that appears when you have right-clicked, you have both the ability to either re-visit the Map Expert or use a number of more finely tuned post-creation editing tools such as Zooming, Layer Control, Map Navigation, and Data Mismatch Resolution.

Layer Control

By clicking on the Layers menu option, you are able to specify the different layers that will display on your map. Examples of this include World Capital Cities and the Mapping Grid. Crystal Reports version 9 is distributed with a number of built-in layers that are accessed through this Layer Control dialog box. These layers can be added and removed from Crystal Reports using this dialog box and more detail oriented layers. Additional maps can be purchased separately from MapInfo (3rd party company) and integrated into Crystal Reports.

Resolve Mismatch

The Resolve Mismatch dialog provides two very useful functions for maps. First, the Resolve Mismatch dialog allows you to select a specific map to use for your report. Several maps are provided out of the box with Crystal Reports and others can be purchased separately. Additionally, you can match the field names stored in the Geographic field you are basing the map onto the names that the involved map is expecting. This powerful feature enables you to take raw, untransformed data and dynamically match it to a geographical map value that the mapping engine can understand. For example, on a map of Canada, you might have multiple inconsistent data entries in your database for the province of Ontario (for example, ON, Ont, Ontario, and so on). Using this dialog box, you can match each of these to the expected value of Ontario, and the mapping engine will successfully interpret all of them.

Size and Position

This option enables you to specify very specific x and y coordinates in addition to height and width measurements for the involved map. Maps can also be dynamically resized and repositioned by grabbing any of the sizing handles that appear on the frame of the map after it is selected.

Zooming and Panning

The Zoom In and Zoom Out options enable you to focus on a particularly relevant part of the involved map. The Panning option enables you to horizontally pan the view of the map to what is most interesting to you and your business users. When any of these options have been selected from the Map Menu, you then are placed in to an interactive mode with the map and your mouse/touchpad. Clicking will zoom you in and out and double-clicking and dragging will facilitate panning.

When selecting from the Map menu, the Map Navigator provides a thumbnail of the entire map you are currently working with. As you saw earlier, Figure 11.12 highlights this Map Navigator in your report sample. The Map Navigator also provides a dotted outline of the area that is currently selected for display. You can fine-tune the area that will be displayed by grabbing this dotted line, double-clicking on any of its corners, and subsequently dragging or expanding them out or collapsing them in while holding down your second click.