Sams Teach Yourself Crystal Reports 9 in 24 Hours

This is a "Teach Yourself" book and as such is very good for beginners. I think this book does an excellent job of clearly explaining how to use Crystal Reports 9 to people who are new to this product. Here are the things that I found really helpful about this book: 1. Clear and Concise Explanation of Concepts Before covering a topic the authors clearly explain the concepts involved. I found this to be really helpful because I clearly understood the purpose of each feature that was covered. 2. Hands-on Exercises This book is full with exercises to reinforce the ideas covered and to demonstrate how to perform the most common tasks. It is not enough to simply discuss the concepts discussed. As a new user of CR 9 it is important to actually practise using the product and this book provides numerous exercises to ensure this. 3. Plenty of Screenshots When you are new to an application it is easy to make mistakes even though the instructions are clearly written. It helps when you have screenshots to show what your screen should look like. That way you can quickly identify where you went wrong. Every important task in this book is accompanied by screenshots. 4. Numerous Practical Examples This book not only teaches you how to perform a task but also gives practical examples of when you might need to use that feature. For example, when I first read about multiple report sections I started wondering why would I need this feature. As if the authors anticipated this, they quickly followed up with a very good example of needing "to create a form letter for your customers and you need to display only one of two possible return addresses on the letter - an American address for customers based in the United States and a Canadian address for the remainder of your North American customers." They then explain how to accomplish this using multiple report header sections and Conditional Formatting. I strongly recommend this book to anyone who is new to CR 9.

I wasn't knowing anything about Crystal Reports, then it was needed that I design critical reports about some data, the project system engineers decided that Crystal Reports is the solution.I bought the book, and it really helped me to do the required job, it took me less than 2 weeks to read it all, and it was really ver helpful.

Lets be honest, any book that says Teach Yourself ... in 24 Hours is a beginner book. And as such, this book is great. I am a application programmer and needed a PRIMER to get started and this book not only allowed me to do that, but allowed me to meet my business critical deadlines on time. Although I may need another book for advanced topics in the future. I find that I can write most of the reports requested of me with this handy book. I even told Crystal Decisions that they should contact the author to have him write their manuals, which are inadequate and hard to follow.

I am new to Crystal Reports 9 and this book is totally awesome! It is very straightforward and easy to understand. This book is layed out very nicely and walks you through all of the steps you will need to create your reports, from how to get into Crystal Reports 9 to how to deploy the reports. I am only through Chapter 9 and am feeling very comfortable that by the time I am finished with this book, I will have no problems writing reports. I hightly recommend this book.

The book can really teach one to write Crystal Reports in less than 24 hours. Good job.