Jeff,
You mirror my experiences with Crystal exactly. I have worked with it since version 5 and it has been doing these "sucky" things since then. You'd think they would fix them over the years. It is really a disappointment that VFP's report writer won't go object oriented. VFP doesn't have one of the best report writers but it is pretty darn functional and pretty much works the way you would expect it to.

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>>3. Anything else I should know?
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>I am in the process, actually almost done, with my first ever Crystal Reports project. Just a few thoughts…..
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>* Note * I have never had a problem with Fox Report Writer that I could not work around. I know there are things it does not do very well, but I personally have not been stopped from using it for anything I have had to do. Keep in mind I’m learning Crystal as I go under extrem duress. I maybe a little biased against something new. I know most of the pitfalls and short cuts with Fox and none of the one pakaged with Crystal.
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>IT SUCKS!
>Using Crystal Reports is like reaching around your Butt to get to your elbow. Ver. 8 is Buggy. Align won’t, most of the time, but Align will resize. Resize won’t, most of the time, but resize will move things. Charts move within their container when you save the form. I have found no way of changing a data field reference, other than delete it then add the new one. Drop a data field on the report then put a border on it, do this several time, with the same field. Borders will come out different sizes. They say they are the same size; they look the same size, in design time. View or print and low and behold one or two of them will be just a hair or two off. You don’t have enough resolution to change the width of the offending field to the correct amount. Cut and Paste work really weird. I have yet to figure out how, when you have multiple objects to paste, how it decides where to start. You hit paste; you get ONE box where your cursor is on the report. You click, sometimes it goes up
>from where you are, and sometimes it goes down. When you select lots of stuff to move, it does not move them all at the same time, looks sort of like the little train that could. First object pulls the next object; just don’t click before everything stops.
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>IT’S GREAT!
>You can do a lot of really neat stuff with this thing. Reports within reports that are not tied to the data that is driving the main report in anyway. The sub reports have their own page frame so you can deal with just that part of the report in preview. Cool very Cool. Charts are a snap, lots to choose from. Formula fields, Parameter fields. Print when equivalent for headers, footer, details or sub reports. Drill downs for detail from summary. This thing is dressed to impress.
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>SUMMARY
>I know my rants are longer than my raves, but most of my rants don’t really have anything to do with design, but more with bugs. Those can be fixed. All in all, if we can’t have anything new, native to Fox, I could learn to live with this.
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>Jeff