I have used Crystal Reports for two years now and I am still scared of it .

It is ugly and cumbersome and some of the functionally is clumsy but it is very powerful and you can produce amazing reports with it. - after a lot of sweat and tears.

I find the hardest thing about it , is that I have to spend alot of time fiddling with the format and it is absolutely boring and not what a software programmer likes doing - but one cannot get away from this in any reporting package.

This is the fundamentals of reporting and there are no short cuts.

Goodluck and believe me there are a lot of us out there who have had similar experiences.