Confirming procedure for adding a group to a report

[dianemarie]

Hello, I started my report with a text box in the Body of the report, and added fields to the text box. I want to add a group. Can groups be added only when you have inserted a table? What if I want my field placement free form on the report, not in a columnar format? I'm still wading through the Help system trying to figure groups out (critical to all our reports, as I'm sure is the norm). Thanks so much for any help.

 

[xlbo]

Can;t quite see why you want a group but a freeform layout but you caould have several 1 column tables in a list control - that might get you where you need.

To be honest though, best bet will probably be to group in the SQL and then simply use textboxes within the list control to get your free form layout

Rgds, Geoff

We could learn a lot from crayons. Some are sharp, some are pretty and some are dull. Some have weird names and all are different colours but they all live in the same box.

Please read FAQ222-2244 before you ask a question

 

[dianemarie]

Thanks Geoff, I just found how to group data in a list in Help, and I was working on a simple group that way. Our reports are very detailed, with lots of information, and in order to get them to print out nicely on 8.5 x 11 paper, we stack fields on top of one another. Is this so unusual? Very few of our Crystal reports, unless they are set up as exportable to Excel, lay out in a columnar format. Access reports, the same. I need to think about this grouping in the SQL query. I still want to see detail, not just the grouped information. That would be possible grouping in SQL?

 

[xlbo]

Hi Diane - sorry I didn't mean for that to come out so bluntly but we just don;t do anything like that.

yes - you could have both the group field and the detail field returned in the SQL. SSRS uses contextual aggregation so a sum of value against the detail field will give you the detail value. A sum of value against the group field will give you the group value.

you may run into some rendering issues if you are trying to stack fields on top of each other as the web renderer will not allow overlapping objects - if 2 textboxes are set up one slightly overlapping the other, the renderer will have a fit and place them pretty randomly somewhere else....

Rgds, Geoff

We could learn a lot from crayons. Some are sharp, some are pretty and some are dull. Some have weird names and all are different colours but they all live in the same box.

Please read FAQ222-2244 before you ask a question

 

[dianemarie]

Not taken as being blunt at all. We recently switched to a new order entry system with it's own built-in reports and they are all tabular in format, which felt very different to us. This is the only company where I have done report writing and I was just honestly curious as to whether the way we format reports is possibly not the business norm, that's all.

Thanks again Geoff. I'm working on grouping and trying different approaches to see what's going to work best (for this particular report at least).