Adding watermarks to Crystal Reports

May 5, 2009 by Victoria Yudin 26 Comments

Here is the latest tip from the Flexible Solutions GP Reports Newsletter: how to add a watermark to your Crystal Reports. I am going to demonstrate with an example.

I have created a statement report, but it’s a little bland, especially when there are only a few lines of data to show:

First step is to copy the watermark image to the Page Header section. On my report I was not using the page header, so I could put the watermark there. If your report is already using the page header, you can add an additional page header by right clicking on the Page Header section and choosing Insert Section Below:

Once you insert the watermark image you may need to re-size it or reposition it lower so that it is does not show up at the top (unless that is what you want).

Now go to Report > Section Expert, click on the Page Header (if you created a new section, it will be Page Header b) under Sections and check Underlay Following Sections on the Common tab:

Click OK and go to your report Preview. I had to go back and move my watermark down some more, but here is the end result:

You can sign up for the GP Reports newsletter to get these tips monthly or you can see the archived newsletters on the Flexible Solutions News & Events page. You can also see a list of all the Crystal Reports tips published so far on my GP Reports page under Working with Crystal Reports.

SQL view with all posted Receivables transactions

SQL view with all SOP line items in Dynamics GP

26 Responses to “Adding watermarks to Crystal Reports”

Rares Reply January 17, 2014 at 7:56 am

Hi,

This works great until you use lines in your report. In any section of it.
The lines are hidden by the picture (hidden behind it).
Is there any way to make the picture stay in the background of the lines?

Thanks

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- Victoria Yudin Reply January 17, 2014 at 7:59 am
  
  Rares,
  
  You are right, others have commented on this as well. Unfortunately, I am not aware of any way around this. 😦
  
  -Victoria
  
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Uday Gupta Reply September 13, 2012 at 10:05 pm

Perfect Solution. really good.

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Andre Reply March 15, 2011 at 3:28 pm

Hi Vistoria, your solution works fine for me…. NOw if I can just get a conditionnal formatting formula to get the watermark to appear or disappear if it meets a condition,…hmmmm….. Any ideas?

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- Victoria Yudin Reply March 16, 2011 at 6:54 am
  
  Andre,
  
  You can right click on the watermark graphic, choose Format Graphic, on the Common tab click on the formula button next to Suppress and enter the condition that you want to hide the watermark for. Most fields and even sections in Crystal Reports has this Suppress based on a formula option, it’s really useful.
  
  -Victoria
  
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hitesh Reply December 17, 2010 at 10:58 pm

best solution i got from your site for crystal report …thanks…

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Rubem Deiana Reply December 8, 2010 at 1:28 pm

Hy Victoria.

Really nice post. I just never known how to do this and you save me a lot of times.

Thanks a lot

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sepide Reply November 24, 2010 at 1:31 am

i do whatever you say and it works correctly for the first time , but when i open the report for the next time , the background image Disappears.

please help me

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- Victoria Yudin Reply November 24, 2010 at 3:39 am
  
  Sepide,
  
  It sounds like your changes are not being saved. I would try saving it in a new location or with a new name to see if you can resolve this.
  
  -Victoria
  
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  - sepide Reply November 24, 2010 at 4:53 am
    
    I saved it in a new location and with a new name but the result was the same.
    Its like a blank container ,there is the image frame but no image.
    
    what should i do?
    
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    - Victoria Yudin Reply November 24, 2010 at 5:24 am
      
      Sorry, this is not something I have run into before. Perhaps it is the size of the image or something specific to it. If you can test with a small, different image, that might give you an idea of whether it’s the image itself causing the problem or something else going on. I would recommend posting your question on a Crystal Reports forum to see if you can get some more people to chime in on this.
      
      -Victoria
      
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      - sepide Reply November 24, 2010 at 6:09 am
        
        I can fix it
        the image resolution was too high and crystal wasn’t able to load it .
        
        thanks for your help
        
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Amril Reply February 26, 2010 at 3:24 am

Great…this is what i’m looking for, you solve my problem, well, i’m not looking for watermark instead, i’m looking for how to give a long text in right side of the report accross each record, well, i can do it now with your solution, thanks,

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Abhishek Soni Reply October 14, 2009 at 10:45 am

thanks for providing the method of making water mark

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Howzilla Reply September 12, 2009 at 11:18 pm

Watermark lays on top of section lines – Some reports only need lines between sections. If you have a simple report with one detail section tell the summary section to print at the bottom. This will fix this problem for some of you.

I would like to know how to tell the watermark to suppress on print. Any one know how to do that?

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- Victoria Yudin Reply September 14, 2009 at 5:02 am
  
  Howzilla,
  
  I saw a similar question recently on Experts-Exchange. The recommended way of handling this would be to pass in a parameter that would determine if the watermark is displayed or not.
  
  -Victoria
  
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  - Nuj Alaliuqac Reply October 7, 2009 at 10:38 pm
    
    Hi, Victoria! I would like to know how and where to define the parameter that you’re suggesting to suppress the watermark. I just need the watermark not to appear on some pages of my report. Also, I am trying to send the watermark at the back of the report but I can’t hardly do it. It still stays on top of the report blocking some boxes and lines. Would appreciate if you could help me to it. Thanks!
    
    Nuj
    
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    - Victoria Yudin Reply October 8, 2009 at 5:43 am
      
      Nuj,
      
      To suppress the watermark based on a formula, go to the Section Expert, select the section where you have placed the watermark, click on the formula button next to Suppress and add your condition there. For example, if you only want the watermark to appear only on the last page, enter the following formula:
      PageNumber < TotalPageCount
      For it to show only on the first page use:
      PageNumber > 1
      
      -Victoria
      
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Kelly Reply July 30, 2009 at 10:16 am

Does anyone know how to change the opacity level in Crystal? I got the background to work great but it’s incredibly dark and when you print over it, the text will not show.

Thanks

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- Victoria Yudin Reply July 30, 2009 at 11:04 am
  
  Kelly,
  
  I don’t think you can do that in Crystal, I typically ask for the image to have the opacity I need. 😦
  
  -Victoria
  
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Sandra Reply July 16, 2009 at 12:08 pm

Hi Zeus,

Thank you so much for the fix. I’ve been searching the interent for a solution, and found many people are having this same problem (since 2005). Your post was the first solution I found and it works GREAT!!!

Thanks Again,
Sandra

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Victoria Yudin Reply May 20, 2009 at 5:44 am

Rocks,

I don’t think you’re doing anything wrong, I am seeing the same behavior. Text will go over the watermark, but lines will not. I don’t see any way to change this. there needs to be some kind of ‘opacity’ setting, like there is in Acrobat, but I don’t see such a setting in Crystal. At least in Crystal XI. I am waiting for delivery of Crystal 2008 and if I see that there is a setting in there for this, I will let you know.

In the meantime, you may want to put the watermark in some other location, where it will not cross over lines. 😦

-Victoria

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- Zeus Reply June 17, 2009 at 10:33 am
  
  Hi guys,
  
  Heard your problem and thought I might shed some light on one fix that I have found. I do not have a screenshot to show you, but if you simply replace your lines with empty text boxes that have a bottom border you can replicate the line and the textboxes are not overlapped by the image like a plain line is.
  
  Hope that helps.
  
  Zeus
  
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Rocks Reply May 20, 2009 at 5:08 am

Thanks for the answer, but I’ve already tested with white backgrounds images as well and found another issue.
It seems that although you put the image to the back, it overlap the lines and the boxes.

In your example that don’t matters because there will only be letters over the image, but in my report the image should fill the entire background and then all of the lines and boxes dissapear 😦

Look at this screenshot. It shows how the image overlap the lines but not the letters… don’t know if I’m doing something wrong, as I’ve said I’m a really noob on Crystal.

Thanks a lot for the help!

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Rocks Reply May 19, 2009 at 11:21 am

Hi!

I’m having a problem implementing the watermark.

If I use a transparent png image as watermark the background of the image renders in black.

I need to make a watermark for draft documents that has the word “DRAFT” crossing the document from bottom left to top right. I’m using right now an OLE Object from MS Word (WordArt) but it renders blurry.

Do you have any advise of how to acomplish this?
Thanks a lot for the examples, they are really useful for us who are noobs to Crystal!

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- Victoria Yudin Reply May 19, 2009 at 11:40 am
  
  Hi Rocks,
  
  I wish I had some advice for you on the images, but I have had issues with those myself as well. For the one I used in my example, I went to the person that works on our web design and all our images, brochures, etc. and asked them for an image to use. Although looking at what I got from her, it’s on a white background, not transparent, perhaps that’s the issue with your png image?
  
  -Victoria
  
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