Laying Out Dynamic Report Contents

• Sep 28, 2018
• 4 minutes to read

You can use Print Preview to see what the resulting document looks like because data-aware controls’ contents are not available at design time.

This document describes how to maintain report elements’ correct location in a published document.

• Maintain Page Breaks
• Maintain the Band Location on a Page
• Keeping Content Together
• Maintain the Size of Data-Bound Controls
• Anchoring Controls
• Suppressing Controls

Maintain Page Breaks

Use the XRPageBreak control to insert a page break at the required location in a report.

You can use the Band.PageBreak property to add a page break before or after printing a specific band.

The following bands support this feature:

• detail band
• detail report band
• report header and footer
• group headers and footers

Maintain the Band Location on a Page

Use the GroupFooterBand.PrintAtBottom and ReportFooterBand.PrintAtBottom properties to choose whether group and report footers should appear at the bottom of a page or immediately after the previous band.

ReportFooterBand.PrintAtBottom = false	ReportFooterBand.PrintAtBottom = true

Use the PageBand.PrintOn property to avoid printing page headers and footers on the same page with a report header and/or footer.

PageHeaderBand.PrintOn = AllPages

PageHeaderBand.PrintOn = NotWithReportHeader

Use the GroupBand.RepeatEveryPage property to repeat group footers and headers on every page.

GroupHeaderBand.RepeatEveryPage = false

GroupHeaderBand.RepeatEveryPage = true

Keeping Content Together

You can choose whether a control’s content can be split across several pages using its XRControl.KeepTogether property.

KeepTogether = false

KeepTogether = true

Enabling this property for a single control makes the same band’s controls behave like this option is enabled.

Use the Band.KeepTogether property to enable this feature for all controls within a specific band.

Note

This feature is not available for the XRChart, XRSparkline and XRSubreport controls.

In a master-detail report, you can print the detail band on the same page as the detail report band using the DetailBand.KeepTogetherWithDetailReports property.

Maintain the Size of Data-Bound Controls

Use the XRControl.CanGrow and XRControl.CanShrink properties to make a data-bound control automatically adjust its height to its contents.

CanGrow = false	CanGrow = true
CanShrink = false	CanShrink = true

Note

This feature does not work with anchoring enabled, as well as for labels that are used to display summary function results.

Use the XRLabel.AutoWidth property to make a data-bound XRLabel or XRCharacterComb automatically adjust its width to its content.

The XRControl.WordWrap property allows you to make a control display its contents in multiple lines when it does not fit into the control’s dimensions.

AutoWidth = false WordWrap = false	AutoWidth = false WordWrap = true
AutoWidth = true WordWrap = false	AutoWidth = true WordWrap = true

The AutoWidth option depends on the label’s current horizontal alignment (the XRControl.TextAlignment property value).

TextAlignment = left

TextAlignment = right

TextAlignment = center

Anchoring Controls

You can anchor a control to the top, bottom, or both edges of its parent container using the XRControl.AnchorHorizontal and XRControl.AnchorVertical properties.

AnchorHorizontal = None	AnchorHorizontal = Right	AnchorHorizontal = Both

Suppressing Controls

Avoid Duplicated and Empty Values

When identical or null values appear in a report’s data source, you can suppress these values in a report using the following properties:

• XRControl.ProcessDuplicatesMode

  Specifies how to process report controls with identical values (leave them as is, merge, suppress, or suppress and shrink).

• XRControl.ProcessNullValues

  Specifies how to process report controls receiving null values from a data source (leave them as is, suppress, or suppress and shrink).

• XRControl.ProcessDuplicatesTarget

  Specifies whether to process duplicate the XRControl.Text or XRControl.Tag property values.

These properties are available for the following controls:

• XRBarCode
• XRLabel
• XRCharacterComb
• XRRichText
• XRTableCell
• XRPictureBox

Conditionally Suppress a Control

You can suppress a control when a specified logical condition is met by specifying the required XRControl.Visible property expressions as described in the Conditionally Suppressing Controls topic.

In this case, a space remains in the band at the control’s location. You can avoid this by placing these controls onto an XRPanel and setting its XRPanel.CanShrink property to true.

For this feature to work correctly, consider the following:

• Specify the XRControl.Visible property’s expression to the controls in the panel (and not to the panel itself).
• Do not assign borders to the panel container. Otherwise, they are printed when the panel’s content is suppressed.