David,

>I've been following this thread, because I have been tossing around the idea of purchasing Crystal Reports. Would you say that it's not worth the trouble? I have been able to survive so far with some serious VFP Report Writer Tweaks and Word Automation, but I'm not sure how much longer that will last. But if CR is as difficult as it sounds, I'm not sure I want to spend the time on the learning curve!

IMO, ODBC and Crystal is certainly not the most easy solution. However when you do your data munging in VFP and copy the results to FOX2X tables, things are really much better. I've been using CR for about three years now and I don't really want to go back to the VFP report writer. Sure there are some troubles also, but in my case not any that can't workarround with.

The attractive UI, drilldown report, subreports, advanced and conditional formatting are things that are a PITA in the VFP reportwriter and can be easely managed from CR.

Walter,