Crystal Decisions enhances Microsoft Excel integration to deliver immediate benefits to business users and IT

New spreadsheet feature extends the power of Crystal Enterprise to the Microsoft Excel user

PALO ALTO, CA, July 8, 2003 - Crystal Decisions, a leading global provider of business intelligence software and services, today announced the availability of new Excel functionality for Crystal Enterprise. With Crystal Decisions' most recent Microsoft Office integration feature, business users can now customize, format and refresh live report data from within Excel, and the resulting spreadsheets can be securely shared over the Web using the delivery platform of Crystal Enterprise. IT users will also benefit from this feature as it enables them to create and deploy spreadsheet reports as an optional format for their users to access and analyze corporate information. This feature is available today as a download for all Crystal Enterprise Premium edition customers.

"This new technology allows organizations to leverage their existing reports, and provide live report data to people that use Microsoft Excel," said Andy Handford, Vice President of Product at Crystal Decisions. "Crystal Decisions' unique solution supports the use of the native Microsoft Excel environment, rather than a proprietary format, and also enables business users to benefit from the power of connecting to and refreshing live report data managed by the Crystal Enterprise framework."

To date organizations have either separated their Excel and core Business Intelligence/reporting systems, or have simply not thought of using the two together, resulting in data integrity, productivity, and sharing challenges within an organization. For example, valuable corporate information is often manually entered or combined from various data sources and stored in spreadsheets on people's desktops, making it difficult to leverage the information across a broader user base and share insights with others based on consistent data.

By providing a centrally managed and secure way to access the information, Crystal Decisions allows organizations to better tap into their valuable corporate data and deliver information as Excel spreadsheets - allowing users to further analyze the data and share the results with other employees. Moreover, by enabling the automatic refreshing of report data from within Excel, the new solution eliminates the laborious process of manually gathering information into spreadsheets and updating it on a regular basis.

The new solution boasts a variety of other features including:

- Access to multiple sources. Create a comprehensive workbook with data from multiple reports, spreadsheets and databases for a full view of business information.

- Flexible data updating. Update data automatically within Excel based on events, schedules, etc. while retaining all Excel formatting- thereby eliminating the manual process of performing this task daily.

- Excel feature integration. Use Excel's familiar functions to personalize report data by adding formatting, calculations, charts, pivot tables, columns, and rows. All Excel formatting and calculations are preserved when report data is updated.

- Integrated Crystal Decisions toolbar. Designed for intuitive point- and-click use, the Crystal toolbar makes it easy for end users to place key report data into spreadsheets. Users can access, filter, sort, group and refresh report data right from within Excel.

- Spreadsheet Publishing. Publish any Excel spreadsheet to Crystal Enterprise right from the Excel client for centralized, secure sharing with other decision-makers.

For More Information

For more information on Crystal Decisions technologies and services, phone 1-800-877-2340 (North America) or 1-604-681-3435 (International), or visit the Crystal Decisions Web site at http://www.crystaldecisions.com.

About Crystal Decisions

Crystal Decisions is a leading global provider of business intelligence software and services that enable the effective use and management of information within and among organizations. As of March 28, 2003, we had delivered more than 14 million licenses and had registered users in more than 170 countries. Crystal Decisions is headquartered in Palo Alto, Calif., and has more than 25 offices worldwide. Crystal Decisions can be found on the Internet at http://www.crystaldecisions.com.

Contact:

    Ian Galbraith, Crystal Decisions Corporate Communications
    (604) 974-2370
    ian.galbraith@crystaldecisions.com

    Liz Sloan, Ruder Finn / Switzer
    (415) 249-6778
    sloanl@ruderfinnswitzer.com

Crystal Decisions, Crystal Reports, Crystal Enterprise, Crystal Analysis, Crystal Services, Crystal Care, Crystal Assist, Crystal Applications and Holos are trademarks or registered trademarks of Crystal Decisions, Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries. All other trademarks or registered trademarks referenced are the property of their respective owners.

SOURCE Crystal Decisions Inc.