Access Report - anchor fields - ms-access

I have a report that is laid out as two columns. The column on the left has a number of fields, stacked. These fields will not need to grow in height (maybe in width) The second column has three fields, stacked on top of each other. These will grow in height. The problem is that when they grow, they also push down the fields in the left column. I would like to keep all the fields on the left anchored in place, even if the ones on the right grow in height.
Also, when I say I have them arranged in columns, I just have them in close proximity. Not grouped using any sub reports or anything.
Is there a way to do this?
thanks
jason

You will need to put one group (left or right) into a subreport, so that the other group can grow independently.
I would probably put the static fields (left) into the subreport, so that the others can grow beyond the page break, if necessary.
If you already have a query that returns the one record to print, you can base both reports on it. Otherwise, if the report shows multiple records, use the master/child linking between main and subreport.

Related

SSRS - having tablix grow upwards

I need to insert a tablix at the bottom of a page and then "grow" upwards, depending on the number of rows returned. Looks like SSRS assumes you only want a tablix to grow downwards, with the location options being TOP and LEFT, instead of including a BOTTOM option.
Is it possible to create an Expression for the location? The only workaround I have thought of so far is to create some kind of blank object above the tablix whose size would change depending on the tablix result set, and "push" the tablix down.

SSRS - Trying to force two tablixes to align with charts and hidden columns

I am trying to build a "quadrant" report, where there are four aligned, equal-sized tablixes (tablices?) on a page. Here's the issue I'm running into on the two quadrants that should be on the left side of the page:
The "top" tablix starts with a basic table, with the caveat that columns that sum to 0 are hidden. Below the table is a row with two pie charts, and each pie chart should be the size of roughly 2-4 of the table columns.
The "bottom" tablix has two side-by-side basic tables, each followed by side-by-side bar charts.
The problem is that they want the two tablixes to exactly align vertically. That is, they want both the left and right edges of the two tablixes perfectly aligned. But with the top tablix, columns sometimes show and sometimes don't, and when the pie charts span multiple columns including one or more that are hidden, SSRS likes to force one column to expand to the full width of the chart which is not what I want. This happens even if I have the top tablix having exactly 2N columns, where N is the number of actual data columns, and then any one of the data columns that is hidden has a "mirror universe" blank column that shows to try to fix the number of columns.
I am too new to post pictures, but I believe I'm able to link to a mock-up I made:
Link to mock-up of report

Tablix pushing other elements down

I have a report with a tablix in it. I just need to stay the tablix in a fixed position and shouldn't push down other elements down it. If say there are 4 rows which will be visible in the specified space and if more then it should not be visible and shouldn't push down other elements.
I tried several ways to prevent
Added tablix inside a rectangle(act as a container) so if it grouped it
will not push down other elements (didn't work)
Enable consume white space in report=true (didn't work)
Keep items together property is set to true in rectangle (didn't work)
Is there any other way to not to pushdown elements in the report even if the tablix gives more rows. It should only show the rows in the mentioned size.
Edit : 1 (7/28/2018)
All the three elements below is pushed down if the table has more rows.
Either I have to fit the rows in this table by reducing the size automatically if possible or It should not push down the elements.
Also if the tablix has less row the elements will move up. I just need to keep the elements (Expr) should stay in the same position.
You still didn't post your design but anyway, here is what I think you want.
The basic idea to to set the area you want you table to cover by using a rectangle of the same size. Then we will reduce the row heights within reason as the number of rows in the table increases. As you cannot directly change a row height, we can get round this by setting the row height to be very small and adjusting the font, as long as the can grow option is on the cells will grow to fit the font size, giving the effect of changing the row height.
Basic steps.
Create your report and add a rectangle that is the maximum size you want your table to be. In my example it's 38mm high.
Create a table inside the rectangle. I find this easier to create it outside then cut and paste it inside, simply dragging it over the rectangle will not work.
Position your additional text boxes, under the rectangle as desired. Set 'Consume Container WhiteSpace' on in the report properties.
Next we need to decide what the maximum and minimum font sizes are that acceptable. In this basic example I only use 3 sizes, 10pt, 12pt and 14pt. If you want to use more then you could write an expression to scale the fonts more accurately but you get the idea.
You'll need to determine the maximum number of rows you can fit into the rectangle when the minimum font size is used, in my case it's 5 rows at 10pt font. Your query will need to take this number into account and never return more rows than this.
On the table, the click row selector for the detail row (this basically selects all the cells in the row). Next, change the font size property to an expression. In this simple example I used this.
=SWITCH(
Parameters!topx.Value <3 , "14pt",
Parameters!topx.Value <5 , "12pt",
True, "10pt"
)
Next set the row height, choose any cell on the row and set the height to something small, I used 4mm but it doesn't matter as long as its' smaller then you will ever show.
In my example, for testing I added a 'topx' parameter and filtered the dataset using this, but this is only for testing.
The final design looked like this. I added a background colour to the rectangle so you can see how it remains static until it's filled.
Then running with various rows looks like this
finally, only if I exceed my maximum (5 rows in this case) does the text below move down.
You could include a column (let's call it RowNumber) in your dataset that shows the row number of the data. Then in your Tablix filter, you can set the filter to show only values from that "RowNumber" column that are less than or equal to the number of rows you want to display in the tablix.
You can use the same concept to limit the number of rows returned in your query, but without knowing how you are getting the data, it is not possible to help with that.
If you want your report to be that static, why not take a screenshot of the data and include that as an image in your report?
No serious reporting tool will "ignore" records that you pass to it using a Dataset, so that's the place where you will have to "ignore" all unwanted data yourself. Restrict the data in the Dataset to only 4 rows (maybe using SELECT TOP 4 ...).

SSRS How to match rectangle peer heights to avoid spacing issues in Word exports?

Quick Summary
I have an issue that only occurs when exporting my SSRS report to a Word document (something clients have requested). In short, when rectangle is shorter than its peer, Word inserts a page break even if there is plenty of whitespace left to render the longer column all on one page. I would like to resolve this so that Word takes advantage of the entire page when the peers are of different heights.
Layout
The highest level of the layout consists of three rectangles, as shown below:
The left and right rectangles are of fixed widths, but variable heights.
There is no extra space at the bottom of the Parent Rectangle; it expands based on the contents of the other two.
Each rectangle several other items and uses multiple datasets.
There are rectangles inside the rectangles, which group some of the child objects together.
Some of the controls are textboxes. I don't know the length of the text at design time.
Word Export Result
There is enough empty space above the footer to hold the entire left column, with excess.
If I open the document and manually enter empty lines into the right-hand column to increase its height, items from the left-hand column which have a height equal to or less than those line breaks will float back up to the first page. This is what makes me believe Word is cutting off at the shortest of the two peers.
Things I've Tried
Another thread suggested putting the columns into a table instead of rectangles, to force them to expand together. However, it required that they use the same dataset, which they do not.
Looked for CanGrow or ConsumeContainerWhiteSpace type options that could apply to rectangles, but couldn't find any. ConsumeContainerWhiteSpace is set to true on the report itself but makes no difference.
Attempted to create a function to dynamically set the inner rectangles' height, or the height/padding of a hidden textbox, based on the longer peer. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be anything for fetching the height at runtime; the functions I found all rely on knowing static data such as the number of rows (of a fixed height) in the sheet, but each column has several fields of which the height is unknown prior to loading data.
Extended the height of each rectangle to that of a full page by default and tried to find a way to make the elements inside consume this empty space as needed. The space was never consumed, and always pushed down, resulting in an extra page of whitespace.
Question
Is there any way to notify Word to use its available whitespace rather than cutting off at the shortest peer? I've been looking for a long while and keep coming up empty-handed.
Thank you!
How about instead of using a rectangle, you use a List with two columns?
I think the list will do better with pagination than the rectangle. YMMV - Not sure how it exports to WORD.
Put your left rectangle in the first column and the right rectangle in the second column.
Use the same data set and Group on 1 (the number) so there's just one row.
Had the same issue. I managed to make it work by adding a horizontal line that take the whole width of the main rectangle just below the two child rectangles

Hiding a table in SSRS

I currently in between the development of a report. I have set of tables that needs to be hidden incase if values are not present.
As seen in the image, the second set of table should be hidden when there is no data in it. It shows the data obtained from the second row of the table.
=IIF(LOOKUP(2,Fields!RowNo.Value,Fields!SeqNo1.Value,"dsContractReceivablePerc")=0,TRUE,FALSE)
This was the condition that I gave for hiding the table.
But after deployment when I viewed my report, I found that even though my table was getting hidden, there was a large empty space left in its space.
Could anyone help me out here? Am I missing anything?
To remove the blank space, you can add a rectangle containing the 2 tables.
Then if the table is not visible, it will adjust the size accordingly.
The Report Design: Best Practices and Guidelines contains an interesting section called "Useful Tips for Report Design".
This page was published in 2005 but is still applicable.
Using Rectangles to Keep Objects Together
Rectangles in Reporting Services can be used either as graphical
elements or as containers of objects. As object containers, they keep
objects together on a page and control how object move and push each
other.
To keep multiple objects together on a page, put the objects within a
rectangle. You can then put a page break before or after the rectangle
by using the PageBreakAtStart or PageBreakAtEnd properties for the
rectangle. Using Rectangles to Control Item Growth and Displacement
Items within a rectangle become peers of each other and are governed
by the rules of how peer items are positioned on the page as they move
or grow. For example:
Items will push or displace each other within the rectangle.
Items will not push or displace items outside the rectangle, because they are not their peers.
If necessary, a rectangle will grow to accommodate the items it contains.
You can use this logic to your advantage when dealing with objects
that expand. For example:
If you want to leave a blank space in your report for a table to expand into, group the blank space and the table in the same
rectangle. When the table grows, it will push the blank space.
If you want to prevent a matrix from pushing items off the right edge of the page, put the matrix within a rectangle with blank space
to its right. Now, the matrix is no longer a peer to the other item on
the page and will not be able to push it until the matrix can no
longer be contained within its rectangle.