Hi all, during reporting workshops one question is asked very often:
„What is the easiest way to create labels in Reporting Services“
If you take a look on the reports inside Dynamics NAV you find a way how to achieve this with different groups and expressions.
But there is another way which is much easier. The challenge is to have a layout inside visual studio which is repeated on one page accordingly the page is full.
To achieve this you have to split your layout into columns. This means:
„We are only designing ONE label and reporting services is doing the remaining part for us“
Let’s start with a new report.
- Create a new report based on customer table with 2-3 additional fields inside the dataset.
- Open Visual Studio
Depending on what kind of labels you are using you have to forward with different settings. In my case I use a typically 3 column label sheet and one labels is 5×3 cm.
(Note: for perfect fit you have to play around with top-bottom-left-right margin settings too)
- Open the Body properties and configure the Width and Height settings.
Now comes the tricky part:
- Open the report properties and set columns to 3 !
You will get a layout like this
The main layout part is only the first column, the two other ones are only like a placeholder and will be rendered when running the report.
- Now just place your data fields in a tablix control and move it until it fits your needs.
- Save and Start the report and you have finally a very label report
(Note: You have to start the report in PrintLayout. Columns are not working in the way like this in the interactive mode)
