Hi Cathy,

I don't do too much work with the Forms Designer in Sage 50 as I do most of my work with Crystal Reports, however I do not believe there is a way to get the terms to float under the line items in the Forms Designer.  You have no access to the formatting of the columnar settings other than what is in the Columns button.  Personally I never liked it floating there and most people ask me to move it from the columns and put it elsewhere when they use the terms in the program.  This could be a similar reason why they programmed the forms designer that way.

As for your point Two, I am a bit confused by what you are considering "auto adjust for data fields".  In Crystal, you can set most fields to automatically expand vertically to as many rows as needed for the data within the field.  However, you have to set a specific width (I assume you mean width by the term length in your message) of the field.  Maybe you can tell us what data field you are trying to edit and what you want to do with it specifically.

Crystal used to come with Simply Accounting back in 2004, 2005 (all versions) and 2006 (Premium only), however it is no longer a designer that is packaged with the later versions of Simply or Sage 50.  So unless you still have it installed or have purchased Crystal 8.5, you will not be able to do any custom design work or even look in your files with it yourself.

Hello Richard:

Thank you for your response and answer to point One.

Point Two: I was meaning the number of characters in the data field is automatically adjusted. Currently we have about 6 different "Shippers" to choose from. The shortest description being only 2 characters and the longest is about 22 characters. On this particular line we have a text box (Shipper:), a data box (Shipper) and beside that we have another text box (Tracking Number:) and than another data box (Tracking #).

Here are two examples of how (currently using Crystal report form) these fields auto space horizontally and print out on our invoice.

Shipper:  RS  Tracking Number:  1234567890

Shipper:  BILL & REPLACEMENT  Tracking Number:  1234567890

I would like to be able to present this the same way using Sage 50 report designer. If I can't that's okay. I will use the longest space needed. Here is an example of how that looks.

Shipper:  RS                                        Tracking Number:  1234567890

Cathy

OK, now I understand.  The short answer is you are out of luck.  You might want to put shipper above the tracking number if you have the room.  Then the shipper name and the tracking number can start at the same place.

eg.

Shipper:                  RS

Tracking Number:  1234567890

Ignore the rest of this if you want but it is a bit of an explanation of what Crystal does in this case.

The Crystal program allows quite a bit more flexibility, including formulas.  The forms designer is not that versatile.  For example, you wanted to be able to see the way Crystal handles it, here is the formula for the shipper information.

if IsNull ({INVCUST_CSV.SHIPPER}) then
" "
else
if (not(IsNull({INVCUST_CSV.SHIPPER})) and IsNull ({INVCUST_CSV.TRACKING_NUM})) then
"Shipped By " + {INVCUST_CSV.SHIPPER}
else
if (not(IsNull ({INVCUST_CSV.SHIPPER} )) and not(IsNull ({INVCUST_CSV.TRACKING_NUM}))) then
"Shipped By " + {INVCUST_CSV.SHIPPER} + " Tracking Number: " + {INVCUST_CSV.TRACKING_NUM};

It is a formula that first checks to see if there is a shipper and if not then it doesn't display any label.

Then it checks to see if there is a shipper but not a tracking number and only puts in the shipped by label and shipper name.

If both the shipped by and tracking number exists, then both labels and pieces of information will show.

Here is the kicker, the original template that includes this formula has set the width of the formula to be the entire width of the page.  So what you thought was a dynamic width change, is really just the above formula using the information as needed and only showing what you have given it.  This is called conditional display of information.  The Simply sorry, Sage 50 Forms designer does not have the concept of "conditional" or "sometimes" so you are always going to see the labels.  In addition, without the formulas, you cannot manipulate the placement of the labels based on the width of the shipper name.

The forms designer is pretty good for what it does.  However, I personally have only had to do roughly 10 forms since it was released in 2005 for clients.  It is easy to use and satisfies many simpler needs.  When clients call me for forms, I ask them to describe what they want.  When they use phrases like "sometimes" or "I want to combine" or "I want to calculate" or "I want the subtotal and taxes at the bottom of the page with the total", we have to move to Crystal because the internal forms designer cannot handle those things.

Hope this helps

Richard, thank you so much for answering both of my questions. So It does comes down to Sage 50 form designer cannot do what I was hoping, but that is okay. What has been designed looks 1,000 times better than the "system" we are currently using. Change is good, a new fresh, professional look.

I cannot wait to put these forms into action. Continuous Improvement - gotta love it.

Again thank you for all your help, not just from me but the many others you respond to.

Sincerely

Cathy

You are welcome.  If you ever decide to go back to a Crystal form, let me know