Major Properties and Settings of Report Item

The Report item contains several specific properties that control the design-time and run-time behavior as well as the general layout and functionality of the generated report documents.

DocumentName

The DocumentName specifies the default document name when exporting from a Report Viewer. The Standalone Report Designer won't use DocumentName when exporting. It will rather use the Report Name.

The DocumentName may be set to an Expression containing Report Parameters and other Gloabal Objects. The DataSource fields are not accessible at this Report level and cannot be used - see Expression Scope for more details.

Paging

The Report item delivers the PageSettings and PageNumberingStyle settings for controlling the paging functionality.

PageSettings

The PageSettings determine the layout of the report document in physical page formats like PDF and when printed on paper. This includes the page size, watermarks, number of columns, and so on.

The PageSettings are entirely respected in physical (hard) pagination formats, whereas some of them are ignored in soft pagination formats. The difference is explained in the article on interactive and print layout.

PageNumberingStyle

The PageNumberingStyle property is related only to the paging of report books and determines whether to restart the page count with each report.

Report Parameters

The Report parameters are global objects that can be used all over the Report. Their main application is for filtering the report data and can also be used for passing external information to the Report and for other purposes.

For more detailed information, refer to the following articles:

• Adding Report Parameters
• Using Report Parameters in Expressions
• Using Multi-Value Parameters
• Cascading Parameters with Applied Filtering on Report Level
• Cascading Parameters with Applied Filtering on Data Source Level

Rendering and Processing

The Report item exposes a set of properties that allow you to control some aspects of its processing and rendering.

• AutoRun— As of 2024 Q4 (18.3.24.1112), it is possible to have control over the automatically initiated rendering process by using the AutoRun property. By default, AutoRun is True.

  When AutoRun=True, the report loading behavior does not change: the report is automatically loaded if all parameters have valid values, or waits until all parameter values are valid.

  When AutoRun=False:

  • The Report Viewer displays the Preview button in the Parameters Area even if all Report Parameters have AutoRefresh=True.

  • If all Report Parameters have valid values, the Report Viewer does not trigger report rendering and displays prompt message in the Report Area to the end user with information on how they may trigger the rendering(by clicking on the Preview button).

  Currently, the AutoRun functionality is not supported in the Native Blazor and Native Angular Report Viewers.

• SkipBlankPages— As of R1 2021 SP1 (15.0.21.224), you can indicate to the Reporting engine whether to ignore the pages with non-significant content by using the SkipBlankPages property. By default, SkipBlankPages is True.

  For example, SkipBlankPages may be kept True to remove the empty pages due to horizontal page breaks. For more information, refer to the articles on horizontal paging and on skipping blank pages in the rendered report.

• RuntimeSettings— As of R2 2021 (15.1.21.512), you can specify device information settings per particular report as part of its definition by configuring the RuntimeSettings report property.

  Apart from setting the export parameters for a particular extension, RuntimeSettings allows you to hide it and change its description when listed to the end-user.

• ReportEngineSettings— As of R3 2022 SP1 (16.2.22.1109), you can set the property CacheDefinitionProperties per particular report as part of its definition by configuring it as an element of the ReportEngineSettings report property.

  The available values are described in the API Reference in Enum CacheDefinitionProperties. Setting the property to Yes/No would force the Reporting engine to enable/disable the property for the specific report. Selecting Default would let the Reporting engine use the 'cacheDefinitionProperties' key in the 'processing' element from the application configuration file - processing Element.

• Localizable—To start localizing the report, set the Localizable property to True. For more information about the localization procedure, refer to the article on localizing reports.

  If at any point the Localizable property is set to False, all resource files are deleted and the report property values are filled with the currently selected language values.

Styling and Design

The Report item exposes a set of properties that allow you to control styling and other design-time-related processes.

• StyleSheet— Enables you to create custom styles through a built-in styling model that is similar to CSS. You can assign these styles by using CSS selectors such as Type, Attribute, Style, and Descendent.

  For more information about the process, refer to the following articles:

  • Using Styles to Customize Reports
  • Creating Style Rules
  • Understanding Style Selectors
  • Style Inheritance and Overriding

• ExternalStyleSheets— Imports StyleSheets previously created and stored in XML files. For more information, refer to the article on exporting and reusing stylesheets.

• UnitOfMeasure— Specifies the default unit of measure for the report. All newly created report items will have their locations, sizes, and so on in this UnitType. For new reports, the unit of measure is automatically determined based on the machine's regional settings - if the current machine uses metric culture, the default unit of measure will be set to cm, otherwise - inch.

• SnapGridSize— Controls the step of the Rulers in the Standalone Report Designer and in the Visual Studio Report Designer.

See Also

• Getting Started with the Report Item
• Page Headers and Footers
• Report Headers and Footers
• Creating Multi-Column Reports