Crystal Reports – ‘Sum’ option and Number formatting missing

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Problem

Using Crystal Reports you’re working with a field that contains numbers but when you open the format window the ‘Number’ tab is missing.

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You may also notice that the ‘Sum’ option is missing when creating a ‘Running Total Field’.

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Solution

The problem you’re experiencing is where  Crystal Reports has not correctly identified the data as a number field.

For me this happened because my data source was an Excel spreadsheet – which by default are all paragraphs.

What you need to do is create a ‘Formula Field’ and wrap your field inside the tonumber() function.

The steps below explain how to do this.

  1. With your Crystal Report open and connected to your datasource, right click on ‘Formula Fields’ under the Field Explorer
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  3. Select ‘New’
  4. Enter a name, for example ff_number_quantity
  5. In the formula window enter the following, where FIELD is your field.
  6. tonumber({FIELD})
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  8. Click ‘Save and close’
  9. Now where ever you need to refer to this data use the formula field
  10. The new formula field will have the ‘Number’ tab in the Format Editor
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  12. As well as the complete list of summary fields when creating a running total
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