Hi all,

I have a frustrating issue I cannot work out. I am using Crystal Reports to develop reports from an excel spreadsheet.

The issue I am experiencing is that whilst specific columns are formatted as Number fields in excel, they come across as string fields in Crystal. The frustraing part is that occasionally when making a new connection to the spreadsheet the fields will come accross successfuly as number fields. However, they seem to be reverting upon a subsequent opening of the CR file holding the report.

I am also getting a mapping box appearing when I refresh the data. If I attempt to map the fields correctly they all revert to string fields.

If anyone could shed some light on this for me it would be appreciated, unfortunately I cannot post the file as it holds sensitive info

I have solved this issue.

As it turns out Crystal determines the field type based on the first cell in each column, I don't think it even looks at how they have been assigned in excel. In this case the first cell is blank, despite it being a number field. I guess Crystal interprets that null value as a string.

I put 1's in the two troublesome columns and the file no longer asks for re-mapping and the fields remain as numbers after a refresh of the report. Luckily we do not report all the way back to the first row in the spreadsheet so the fake data won't be an issue.

Good that you solved the issue.

Thanks for the knowledge sharing