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# One Report, Multiple Output Options
- URL: https://www.philsimon.com/suppressing-values-in-crystal-reports/
- Published: 2009-02-02T07:33:49.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-07T01:40:48.000Z
- Description: Create one Crystal Report with multiple display options.
- Author: Phil Simon
- Tags: Data Issues, Reporting

![](https://i.imgur.com/KmfvSIV.jpg "reporting")

One of the disadvantages of using groupings in a single Crystal report is that the export into Excel makes the data unsortable. However, there is a neat way around this. You can use the suppressing section functionality to, in one report, prompt a user if they want to export it cleanly to Excel (suppressing all of the groupings). This is great if end-users want one report with different output options. The one downside is that you couldn't schedule this in many tools because report needs the prompt - export to Excel yes/no.

This tip addresses of one of the biggest challenges that consultants have with clients:

**Trying to minimize the number of custom reports required by the organization.** 

Report-creep may not be a widely-used term but I have seen people request two different reports for essentially the same information. The PDF below walks you through how to use one report in multiple ways.