David,

Crystal Reports is a great reporting tool and I really like it, but I had this one VFP to Crystal integration issue that had to do with ODBC. I was previously running stand-alone Crystal Reports (piece a cake). Or if I did need to do a VFP form to run a Crystal Report, I made the VFP table a FOX2X table and everything was A-OK.

I would recommend Crystal Reports. It is relatively easy to use once you get into it. I taught myself how to use it without any help. The documentation is adequate and so is the tech support. There are also some other computer books out there that helped me with Crystal formulas.

If you know Visual Basic you can even use that syntax in Crystal Reports coding. But for the most part you don't have to do any programming. Just pick the DBs you want to use, pick the fields you want to show and that's it. And when you want a total or count of a field you just pick the field and pick "Sum" or "Count" or "Average". And you can turn the numbers into a graph simply by going to the graphing menu and picking a graph. And sorting is just about as simple.

The hardest part is using the OCX (ActiveX) control on a VFP form with ODBC. That's what's causing me most of my problems, but I think I have that fixed now. Other than that, I like it. Sorry, if I scared somebody, I didn't mean to. I was just pulling my hair out thanks to VFP ODBC. At this rate, I will be an ODBC expert in no time. Yeah right!