Formatting a Report (Report Builder)

Formatting the items in your report makes the report look more attractive and enhances its readability. You can format the text boxes, the images, the fields in the report layout, and the data while in design mode.

Some items in your report are already pre-formatted for convenience; however, you can change the formatting already in place. In some instances, Report Builder automatically formats the information for you, for example, column heading text is automatically formatted as Bold, and every cell within the report layout has a cell padding of 2 points on each side. In other instances, the data source provides the formatting information for the contents of a field, for example, the person who designed the data source might assign a monetary format to fields that contain monetary values. In this case, when you drag the field to the design area, the monetary field displays placeholder data with a currency symbol and the appropriate number of decimal places as specified in the data source.

You can change formatting options by selecting the item you want to format and then using the Format dialog box or the Formatting and Borders toolbars to make your changes.

The formatting changes you make to the report are reflected in the design area. You do not need to run the report to see applied formatting.

In This Section

Topic Description

Formatting Numerical Data (Report Builder)

Discusses how to format numbers and dates.

Aligning Data, Text, and Images (Report Builder)

Discusses how to align report data and text.

Formatting Data, Text, and Images (Report Builder)

Discusses how to format text options, such as font, font style, and size, within text boxes and the report layout, and how to format image data.

Formatting Borders, Lines, and Gridlines (Report Builder)

Discusses how to add borders and gridlines to text boxes and the report layout.

Applying Background Colors (Report Builder)

Discusses how to fill text boxes and areas of the report layout with background colors.

Formatting within the Data Source

Differences between computer culture and data source culture settings can cause confusing behavior when designing and running a report.

Change History

Release History

17 July 2006

New content:
  • Added link to Formatting within the Data Source topic.

See Also

Concepts

Working with Report Layouts (Report Builder)
Working with Data (Report Builder)
Running a Report (Report Builder)
Report Builder How-to Topics

Help and Information

Getting SQL Server 2005 Assistance