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Crystal Reports 2011: Give'em what they want!

There are few things I look forward to more than a new version of Crystal Reports—and I am in luck, as Crystal Reports 2011 is just around the corner. They say that with BusinessObjects software, there are “integration” releases and “innovation” releases, and Crystal Reports 2011 is definitely a step forward in the right direction, providing tighter integration with SAP data sources, but there are still some features that hardened report developers and end-users are going to love


And first and foremost, is the new Excel 2007 export format. In a perfect world, users would be content to view their beautifully formatted reports online, but alas it is not a perfect world. The comment I most often hear is “Great report design, can I export that to Excel?” (To which I roll my eyes in the back of my head like I am having a seizure)

Unfortunately, users love to export their Crystal Reports to Excel, where they can chop, change and re-arrange the data as they see fit. Crystal Reports has always had an Excel export, but with Crystal Reports 2011, this has been updated to support Excel 2007 and produces .XLSX files which can have up to 1 million rows in them. In addition, this export format uses compression technology to make smaller file sizes.

So if your users are clamouring to get at their report data set, they are going to love this release! And make sure you remind them that while Crystal Reports 2011 does provide a great export format for Excel, they could be using LiveOffice and cut out the exporting step all together. If you are going to use Excel, might as well use it the smart way!

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