How do I suppress a box conditionally?

[Morey]

I am creating a 3 column name and address list. Selected people need to have a box drawn around their information based on their office. (I have a field that designates their office.) After I drew the box around all the detail lines and the associated group header and details, I went into the format for the box and saw that there was no way to write a formula for the suppress checkmark.

Is there a "workaround" for this problem?
Thanks for your help.

 

[pmanivas]

Which version r u using?

 

[Morey]

CR 8.5 Developer

 

[pmanivas]

Ya what u said is correct, There is no suppress on condition for boxes and lines.
But the purpose of it is, only to higlight then why dont u use something like change the background of the records.
This is available on the details, format section, color, background color. Here u can use conditions. Let me know this is helpful or not

 

[Morey]

I understand what what you mean and eventually, I may have to do this. Right now I have been asked to duplicate, as closely as possible, a hardcopy report that uses the box as the way of highlighting the names/addresses.
I did see a reference to using the RDC as a technique for controlling the visibility of objects. I've never used this feature and I'm wondering if it can be used to control a web report.

Thanks for your help.

 

[alley211]

Have you tried this.

Break your section in two.

Insert a box that is big enough so that it will go around your fields in the second section.

Place your fields in the second section.

Turn on the underlay for the box section only, then conditionally suppress the box section so that the box only appears when the condition is met.

Watch out for nulls!

Your suppression formula could be something like this:

isnull({Customer.Address2}) or {Customer.Address2} = ""
or left({Customer.Address2},5) = "Suite"

The only items on this report that should have boxes around them are non-null, non-blank and things that don't start with suite.

Hope this helps.

 

[pmanivas]

Thats wonderful

 

[Ngolem]

DON'T USE A BOX AT ALL!!!

What I do is overlay the section I want BOXED or SHADED conditionally with a text field with a single blank character entered for text.

I can easily suppress or unsuppress this field as well as control the shading if I want to..

Hope this helps
ngolem

 

[Morey]

My problem is that the rectangle has to surround multiple names (from 4 - 6 variable) and the box can be different sizes. The only commonality is that the box has to surround all the details within a group (from header to footer) spanning many sections.
I will also have to compress blank detail sections, for example if address 2 is missing I won't print that detail section and the rest of the address moves up.

This whole thing is not a problem if I can use a shaded color instead of a rectangle. Then I can put a formula in the color format and all works, shading only the officers. I'm going back to my users and present this as the alternative.

 

[csm2]

How about using a text box. The borders can be conditionally suppressed.