Empty fields in CR are suppressed

When a field is empty, crystal report suppresses it. This is evident because I have a formula for the border of the field that turns it on. If the field has some text the border is visible but if the field is empty there is no border.
The formula is simply:
crSingleLine

I have the same .rpt file working on crystal reports 9 without this issue. The issue started when I converted it to CR 2020.