Formatting Cells, Columns, and Rows in SSRS

            There’s a lot to cover here, but not a whole lot to say. But I’ll start with:

TextBox Properties

            Right clicking on a text box or tablix and selecting Properties brings us to where we want to start. 

General: Allows us to name our textboxes, give them a value or expression, and even add a tooltip for when the end user hovers over it. We also have the ability to “Allow height to increase/decrease” This becomes important when you have an image in the cell or need to hide things.

Number: Crystal Reports users will recognize this. This allows you to perform formatting on a number/string/date in the textbox. You can add, remove, or format data from your query with this tool. Such as removing the time off of a parameter that would normally display the date and time. 

            Alignment: Allows for more control over moving and padding text along.

            Font: Self explanatory. Allows you to play with the font, font colors, size, and effects. 

Border: To make your cells have borders, choose your choice of a style, solid, dotted, etc. Then, choose a width and color. Then use None or Outline to place the border. The Preview also allows you to play with taking away sides from the border. 

            Fill: Fill allows you obviously, fill the background of the cell with a color or image. 

Visibility: Probably the most used tab by me. Allows for you to write an expression on when to show or hide the cell. Expressions here are in the format of  “Hide if <<exp>> evaluates to true”. Such as LineNum = 5. Also allows for toggled visibility. 

Interactive Sorting: A really cool feature I’ve never used. Adding it to a cell allows you to sort ascending or descending at runtime by clicking an arrow put into the textbox. 

Action: Allows you to jump to another report, bookmark, or URL.

Report Properties and Format Menu Bars

            Found by clicking off of any report items in the Design region. The Report and Format menu items will appear on the menu bar. Click Report, and select Report Properties. 

Report Properties

            Page Setup

                        Sets your margins and printing options.

            Code

                        Where you write or paste your custom Visual Basic Code.

            References

Where you can add or remove assemblies or classes. I’ve not had to use this section yet.

Variables

            Where you can declare report variables. I’ve not had to use this yet. 

Format

            The Format menu bar is the same thing you see in most word processors. It helps your align, color, and fill text. There is also a toolbar that does the same thing.

Properties

            Report Properties

There’s a section section devoted to Report Properties in SSRS. This is in the Properties box in the lower right hand corner (by default). If it is not enabled you can renable it by clicking View -> Properties Window

Notable fields: 

Author: Set the report’s author. 

BackgroundImage: Sets the background in one or more cells. 

BorderColor, BorderStyle, BorderWidth: Much quicker than using the Border method above. 

Size: The easiest way to line up columns, especially when dealing with subreports. No one likes a messy reports with unaligned columns, so learning to copy paste from this section should become second nature pretty quick.