Just based on my recent experiences with Crystal Reports -- if I had a
choice between CR and Access reports, I would pick Access.  It is
definitely more flexible, and seems to be more stable as well.

I'm just now learning Access and fiddling with CR (bundled v.4.5). Now
here's an interesting topic.  I'd sure like to see this thread stay
active for a while. (assuming there's no "Reports FAQ":-). Surely all
you VB/Crystal/?Access? Gurus *must* have opinions.

On Mon, 27 Oct 1997 14:31:53 -0800, "TAverett"

From what I know on the subject, anyone correct me if I am wrong, there really
 isn't a way to open an Access report from vb.  So, Crystal Reports gives you
 the ability with the activeX control to create reports from a variety of
 datasources.  I do know that Crystal has been much harder to learn than
 Access.  We just played around with a report tool by VideoSoft that converts
 Access reports to a format that can be called from vb.  There are drawbacks
 however, no subreport support, no check boxes or option groups.  For simple
 reports it is probably easier than Crystal.

Allan Adams

I have heard that someone makes an OCX for Access reporting similar to what
the CR OCX does with Crystal -- a colleague told me he saw it in the
VBExtras catalogue, but I haven't had a chance to check it out yet.  Has
anyone else seen this?

Tristan Averett

Ooooh, But you can always OLE-call any Access Report or form (or whatever
you'd like from access) It does have to be an ActiveX object. OLE is ok
aswell. It works just fine, for those that don't want the crystal hassle.

Diederik

We use both Crystal and Access to call reports from VB.  If we could, we
would use just Crystal, but when Crystal couldn't do a report in the format
needed, Access could.  So far, what we've had to do is call Access from VB,
but the full-blown Access app is running and the users have access to it.
All we could do was creat customized toolbars and menus.  Where Crystal is
much better is that it looks like it's all part of the VB app.  The user
never sees anything other than the reports.  It's much cleaner.

I hope this helps your argument.

I've used both Access and Crystal (4.6) reports.  In my opinion, although
Crystal is rumored to be more powerful than Access, I can't for the life of
me figure out why the industry standard report writer has such a poor user
interface and is so poorly documented.  I can't believe that you can't set
the properties of multiple controls, drag multiple controls, or even copy
controls.  As a user I think Access reports are much more intuitive and I
think the UI is of professional quality.  As a developer, I think that it
is about time that Microsoft created a standalone control for their report
writer.  I don't see why they ship Crystal with VB.  This is an excellent
chance for them to crush a competing product, I don't see why they're
holding back in this case, they usually love to stomp on the competition.

Jorge

I agree! Crystal Reports is very bad implemented in VB opposed to Access.
The VB documentation on CR is also more or less useless.

Daniel

Does anyone know if there are any good 3rd party books about coding crystal
reports into vb applications?

There is rumored to be a relationship between MS and CR that us mortals are
not privy to. Also CR is a massive product. It would be no trivial task for
MS to create a Crystal.

Crystal has features that would probably not be in MS 's best interest to
have in their report engine.