Friday, May 29, 2009

SSRS Column Width Auto Size

While fixing the problem described in my previous post I saw lots of people trying to set auto width for the columns. Without any luck though... I found a way:

  1. Change Expression to be something like =”<DIV>” & Replace(Fields!YourField.Value," ","&nbsp;") & “</DIV>”
  2. Change placeholder properties – General tab – Markup type – HTML-Interpret HTML tags as styles. (Placeholder properties can be accessed by right clicking on Expression (Field) inside of the cell, not on cell itself).

That was too easy :)

PS. Works for SSRS 2008, never tested on 2005.

PPS. Keep in mind - this works ONLY in web browser. Export to PDF and even printing will still use predesigned column width. There might be a workaround too - but I don't really need it, so I will leave it to you guys.

Please comment if you find any additional notes.

Posted by Paul Shkurikhin at 2:04 PM
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14 comments:

  1. Where did you insert this expression? I tried horizontal alignment under "Texbox Properties" and under size in the Properties pane. Neither worked.

    fzlala@gmail.com
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  2. I changed the value field in placeholder properties and replaced it with the provided expression. I also did step 2. It didn't work :(
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  3. Right click on the Field, then select "Expression" from the popup menu.
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  4. Amazing! never thought of that. Thank you for this tip. Helped save a lot of time!
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  5. I did all this and tried different ways but it doesn't work. I use RS 2008. nay ideas why?
    tautvis@gmail.com
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  6. It was working with SSRS2008. Double check all the steps and play with columns properties. For the test - create project from scratch just to test this functionality.
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  7. Cant find step 2 in SSRS 2005
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  8. It was never tested in SSRS 2005 so please comment if you were able to make it work.
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  9. I followed the steps in SSRS 2008 R2 and it did not work while viewing the report in IE 8.
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  10. Works well for me - thanks dude, Now to work out a way (other than basing column widths on parameters) to make it work for pdf's :/
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  11. This will not work in ssrs 2005 as it does not support html formatting. ssrs 2008 does.
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  12. Aw, this was a really quality post. In theory I'd like to write like this too – taking time and real effort to make a good article… but what can I say… I procrastinate alot and never seem to get something done.
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  13. In my case the bold formatting was preserved in both screen view and export formats (tried pdf and excel only). :)
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  14. it works just fine...thanks alot.
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