Crystal Reports: Error on Sum in Formula Field

Question

Intro: I have a very complex report. To make it a bit more easy, I build my report this way: In VS.net, I have a class. In the report I made a "Field Definitions Only"-file (ttx) which is exactly the same as the class. In code behind I set the class as the datasource of the (sub)report.

Problem: One class (and also the ttx-file) has the following fields: PriceTraditional, PriceCommercial. And there are 2 formulaFields which are SumPriceTraditional, SumPriceCommercial.

When the class is empty, the datasource is also empty. This is when the error occurs. Probably because I take a sum of a field that is NULL.

Solutions I tried (but don't work):

1. I tried to change PriceTraditional with a formulaField (ex: PriceTraditionalDummy; with formula: if isnull({DamageForReport.PriceTraditional}) then 0 else {DamageForReport.PriceTraditional}. But then I get an error: A number is required here. (Which is caused by the else part of the structure.
2. I tried turning on and off the default values replacing (no result)

Question: I just want to have a report where I can use that Sum-FormulaField without blowing up the report if the field used in the sum is empty.

Any advice on how to solve this would be great!!

Kind regards,

Wim

Answer 1

Just follow the steps described in this

post

http://crystalrepterrinfo.blogspot.com/2009/11/error-on-sum-in-formula-field-crystal.html

Answer 2

Some things that you can try are to either cast the 0 as Currency using CCur or cast {DamageForReport.PriceTraditional} to number using CDbl or ToNumber.

It seems that for some reason it thinks that the 0 in the first part and the {DamageForReport.PriceTraditional} in the second part are of different types so you can cast one to match the other.

I haven't tried either of these, but it may be as simple as using $0 or 0.0 instead of 0.

Just throwing out some ideas. Hope it helps.