I'm working on a report in Crystal XI for which I seem to need sub-subreports, though it seems they aren't supported.  So, let me explain the situation (hopefully someone has a fucntional workaround for the issue):

 

The data I'm using comes from an MS Access file (actually an export from Raiser's Edge), with a table format that looks something like this:

 

Donors (primary records)

Solicitors (linked to Donors, many-to-one)

Actions (linked to Donors, many-to-one)

Notes (linked to Actions, many-to-one)

 

My report is grouped primarily by Donor ID.  For each donor, I want to output information for all related Solicitors--I'm using a subreport here, and it works great.  I then want to show all actions for each donor, but I want them split into two groups by date (first group = past 7 days, second group = next 30 days).  I had accomplished this by creating two subreports for actions, and using the Select Expert for each of those two subreports to pick the appropriate action dates to include.

 

Each action may have 0, 1, or more than 1 note associated with it.  I want to list the action information and all notes associated with each action--unless there are no associated notes, in which case I just want to list the action information.  I accomplished this by grouping each of the two Actions subreports by Action ID, putting the action information in the group header, and putting the associated note information in the detail section.

 

This works fine if there are one or more notes associated with an action.  HOWEVER, if there are no notes associated with the action, there is no information in the detail section, and the action is omitted from the subreport.  If I could create a sub-subreport for each action to display the notes, I could prevent this.  But since I can't, I'm stuck.

 

Any thoughts?

 

- In the main report, group by Donor ID and link to the Actions table and from Actions to Notes.  Make these links "Left Outer Join"s by right-clicking on the link and selecting "Link Options" and changing the selection under "Join Type".  This will get you your data even if there are no notes for an action or solicitors for the donor.

 

- Put the Solicitors in a subreport and place it in a Donor ID group header section.

 

- Group on whatever field in the Action table that you want to sort on.  Put the action data in the group header.

 

- Put the notes in the Details section.

 

- If you want the Action data to appear on the same line as the first note, turn on "Underlay Following" for the Action group header and make sure that your fields in the header and details line up correctly so that nothing gets overwritten.

 

-Dell