I have some text I want to keep "atomic" within a report header. The text in question is the "Period Ending Date: 1/15/1998". It is OK if that block of text wraps down below, but I would like to keep the whole block of text together on one line. This has to be dynamic however, as the text will grow and shrink dynamically--sometimes the server and database and company name will be short and everything fits on one row, sometimes long even the database name will need to wrap.
And this is how I have it defined in the expression
Is keeping it "atomic" possible?
As the comments say you basically have two options, either make the text box wide enough to fit any possible combination of company, server, database and end date that could occur - you can use max(len([your fields])) in SQL to determine the maximum possible characters and then figure out the width from your font information - or you can put the separate chunks of information into separate text boxes and arrange them however is most aesthetically pleasing to you. Personally I'd have a company name box on one line, the Server and database beneath it and the end date beneath that. Up to your preference though obviously.
#Jeff.Clark, I guess you need to rethink the design. I agree with #Viking's comment. As far as i know, what you are trying to achieve is not possible in SSRS (keeping the Can Grow = False) and want to wrap it on the field level not the word level. I tried using it in the placeholder but it is splitting the field.
However, if your requirements are very critical and no matter what you have to do it in this way then i think you can achieve it by determining maximum characters the cell can accommodate in one line and then subtracting the SUM of LENGTH of the the fields+ the text(ex: "Totals per payroll period") and find out a position in your string to insert VBCRLF so the rest of the data will go to next line. Without the original expression i will not be able to provide the accurate updated expression but it will be nested IIFs to get the position of VBCRLF. I personally do not prefer this method because it will take lot of processing on the report design level and can affect the overall performance of the report as well as not very pretty when it comes to the maintenance of the report.
Related
I work with ssrs with a dynamic row data in matrix/tablix. There is possibility when I have more than one page (say it two pages) where the data just fill half of the second page and leave a blank space below (half page blank space on the second page). How is the way to fill this blank space with empty rows? (whether rendering empty rows in the tablix, or inserting background image, or anything. I don't have any solution yet as it is dynamic data with many possibilities of the blank space size on the page)
Unfortunately there aren't any settings in the reporter that support this behavior. There are however several workarounds you could use to get the wanted result.
[1]
You could determine the amount of rows that fit on the first page and on the second page, just in case you have items above the
table on the first page. Before you send the datasource to the
reporter count the total rows and check if it exceeds the first page.
Then calculate the number of rows missing to fill an entire second
page (or third/fourth... if you ever get more data). Finally you add
empty rows/objects at the end of your datasource, which will of cource
cause the pages to be filled to the end.
As was pointed out before, this solution is only possible when working
with fixed row heights. If certain columns can have multi-line cells
then these could be checked as well and taken in account when
calculating the number of rows being displayed on the page. This makes
it slightly more complicated but is still a valid solution if you can
predict which columns might be troublesome.
[2]
A second solution would be to hide the table borders and place the table inside a rectangle that spans the maximum size of the
page. The borders of this rectangle can be used to display the table
outer borders and columns can be displayed by adding lines inside the
rectangle. This will cause the columns to fill the last page of the
report automatically. Unfortunately this isn't a solution to display
horizontal grid lines.
[3]
A third approach is adding an extra table directly below your table
with the same size of columns. Using the same method as from the first
solution you could fill the second table to represent the empty rows.
You'll probably have the same issue as with the first solution when
dealing with multi-line rows though.
I believe solution [1] and [3] will offer the most exact solution, if you're willing to do the math. If you don't want any horizontal lines then I suggest using approach [2].
Using an image to overlay the borders is of course another option but then you'll have the same issues when dealing with the multi-line rows. If you plan on working with fixed row heights, where you leave space for multi-line cells then this is becomes a valid approach but so does solutions [1] and [3].
Update:
If you only need the filled pages for printing you could make sure you add enough empty rows to fill at least the entire last page, these may go to a new page (1 new page, not 2... you can use a simple calculated guess for this) and exclude the last page when printing.
I'm new to SSRS reports, and I didn't write this report, I'm just trying to fix it; and I've had no luck searching for anyone else suffering from this (too many false-positive matches).
Part of the data for a field is being rendered in a way that leaves half of the first character invisible. Perhaps the best thing to do is to show a screenshot of the problem (see the data in the final column):
StackOverflow says I don't have enough reputation to embed the image; but it's here:
http://i.stack.imgur.com/1YtcB.png
The "8" character is being chopped in half. I don't understand why the data isn't forced inside the 2pt padding, or why it doesn't split the date value between the date and time.
By the way, I suspect there is little value asking why the penultimate column looks OK: the columns are different widths, and the penultimate column is an expression returning a DateTime whereas the final column has to handle the possibility of the DateTime being null.
The RDLC file is here (requires you to download the file; suggestions of a better alternative are welcome): http://www.filedropper.com/markerprogresssummarybycomponent
It looks like it's attempting to fit as much of the date/time on the same line without wrapping as possible, which doesn't necessarily fit in that cell.
2 Suggestions:
Increase the width/padding of the cells that are cutting off text so the
entire date/time fits
If it's not a problem to have the time shown on the next line, you could force it to wrap at the time part, thus eliminating the issue:
=Replace("8/6/2015 12:35:02 PM", " ", chr(10), 1, 1)
I come to you with a question on how I can create a simple flow chart like in the pictures below in SSRS. I have a query that returns rows with events, and a date column that I can use to organize these events in chronological order.
I have it all basically set up but I am running into a design problem. I have a tablix with two columns in a group for the box+arrow combination, with column visibility set up to hide the arrow if it reaches the last event. What I would like to happen is for the boxes to reach the end of the page (the rightmost side of the page, and then come down a short distance below that row of boxes and continue on the same page (Ex. B). What it's doing is reaching the end of the side of the page, and breaking to the next page, effectively creating a bunch of pages with only one row of boxes on each page. (Ex. A)
Ex. A: What it does:
Ex. B: What I want it to do (accidentally forgot to include the arrow on the middle rightmost box in the picture, the second and third rows are just continuations of the first obviously):
I would almost call it row wrapping but it's not exactly the same. To bring the problem away from my specific flow chart design, I want to make tablix columns wrap down directly below the table (not the content inside the columns, the actual columns themselves).
I've done some reading on column groupings and interactive page size. I don't really understand the column grouping manipulation, especially when trying to apply it to my situation, and the interactive page size doesn't seem to be what I am looking for either. Any help on this would be really appreciated!
I suggest you use a multi-column layout, e.g.
http://nederveld.wordpress.com/2010/02/15/how-to-do-a-column-layout-in-sql-reporting-services/
Each of your Box + Arrow pairs would go into each cell.
I'm a bit confused about your arrow requirement, you might need to use an expression based on RowNumber to hide the arrow in the last column.
I have a report in SQL Server Reporting Services 2005. It makes use of a page header and footer and has no subreports. The body portion contains a few smaller elements and then a simple single column table. The table has a single header row and a single detail row. The header is just a label, basically. The detail row is a single textbox with a simple Fields!FieldName.Value as its output.
The problem is that FieldName, in this case, is a highly variable length string. It can be a sentence up to 8000 characters (usually no more than 2 pages worth). The text can contain line/paragraph breaks (returns) but no other special formatting. Everything is fine so long as the content fits on one page. Once the text exceeds a single page (8.5x11), the text is very nastily cut off abruptly. Since this is a pagination problem, it is only visible when exporting to PDF or when viewing the report in Print Layout.
It seems as though there is a maximum size the row can grow to on the first page and then it chops it off and starts it up on the second. But this cutoff is not carefully managed in relation to the text. It can occur right in the middle of a line, causing it to show the top halves of the letters on the first page and the bottom halves at the top of the second page.
Obviously, this is unacceptable, as it looks very unprofessional and can impair the readability of the line that was so messily split. I also can never be sure it'll split badly, as sometimes it more or less ends the page evenly, though usually I can still see the hanging tails of certain letters on the next page (g and p for instance).
The secondary problem is that I'd really like the table row header to repeat on each page. Setting the obvious property, "RepeatOnNewPage" has no effect. I suspect this is because it's still trying to show the single really vertically tall row. It seems like it's okay repeating headers and splitting pages nicely between detail rows. But because this is basically just a big block of text, and thus just one really tall row, it doesn't split it nicely.
What can I do or use to solve this problem? I can live without the repeating header so long as it just doesn't cut off text in the middle of a line.
Unfortunately, page break fine tuning is one of the biggest weak points of SSRS.
I can only suggest that you break up the long text into multiple rows before SSRS ever gets it. You'd want to parse the text to look for word breaks. The result will be odd looking breaks in the output since you won't know where the break will come on a line in the printed report. However, it'd be much more readable than cutting text in half.
If the text is comprised of reasonably sized paragraphs, you could parse it out that way instead.
You might even go so far as to measure the text using SQLCLR and the System.Drawing.Graphics.MeasureString method to fine tune the output but I wouldn't recommend that route for the feint of heart.
In SSRS 2008 R2 and Visual Studio 2008:
Click (not-right click) a textbox and go to the properties window (lower right side of VS) -> KeepTogether = false.
The text will cleanly cut between a line and continue on the next page.
Just thought to add here as searching for this doesn't return many results.
I have done what JC has suggested in the past where I've broken down the text into paragraphs and each paragraph would in effect be its own row. Works pretty well given the limitations of SSRS.
One thing to be careful about is that you would need to make sure that your paragraphs sort properly. In most cases it would display them in the correct order, but adding in a column with sortID to give some sorting hints to the table would probably be a good idea.
In the end, the cut-off-text problem was due to non-standard padding on the textbox in question.
For whatever reason, having padding any greater than the defaults (2pt all around) seemed to cause its pagination to go sour. I imagine it is due to the algorithm not taking padding into consideration when deciding where to break the paragraph. With default padding, the line always ends cleanly and nicely on each page.
As a workaround (since I liked the extra white space the padding gave to the layout), I used a rectangle to achieve the border and made the textbox inside it smaller than the rectangle by about an eighth of an inch. This gave the box some inner padding while still apparently allowing the pagination to correctly determine when to break up lines.
Still, a lot of unnecessary headache.
Background info:
I was handed a "Tool", which was made using MS-Access 2007, and asked to add some things... The tool is basically a collection of options for querying a database. On a form titled CreatedReport there is a listbox that is bound to a table called analyzed which has all of resulting data from the query/queries that ran. The original creator of this tool set the column widths to specific values but with the new collection of possible results, those widths are very far off.
Desired Outcome:
The final result I want to achieve is, of course, to have the columns be the correct widths for the info that is in the columns. As long as that is achieved, I really don't care which route I have to take to get there.
Question:
How can I get the columns in a listbox in MS-Access 2007 to be sized appropriately for each use? Is there an auto-size feature I haven't stumbled across yet or do I need to hard code the set of column widths for each group? This wouldn't be too hard to do since there would only be about 4 or 5 different groups but I would prefer for the process to be automatic if at all possible.
Another approach would be to have the results returned in a sub form datasheet view, then the user can adjust the column widths also to set the widths automatically use code like this:
Example
This example takes effect in Datasheet view of the open Customers form. It sets the column to fit the size of the visible text.
Forms![Customers]![Address].ColumnWidth = -2
You could put this code into the Current Event of the sub form.
I don't think that Robert Harvey's answer is actually responsive to your question.
What you need to do is:
calculate the maximum length of the values in each column,
AND
figure out, based on the font in use, how wide the column should be.
Note that you may not actually want to set it to the maximum width if the value exceeds a certain threshold.
I don't know to do the second taks, but I suspect Stephen Lebans has already done the work on it. You might want to search his website for it.
Last time I checked, you still had to write code for this.
Your best bet is to use a resizer someone has already written. Here is a good one. It's old, but it shoul still work:
http://www.jamiessoftware.tk/resizeform/rf_jump.html
This is a quick solution that should help when you want to set up listview columns of different widths, and you know in advance the widths you want (eg, you know that column X will always be a 2-character State abbreviation, and column Y will always be a city name).
Just supply all the widths as a single semi colon-delimited string. Code each width as a number and a unit, such as 'in' or 'cm'. This worked well for me: Me.lsvPayHist.ColumnWidths = "1.0 in;0.8 in;1.0 in;1.0 in;2.0 in"