Report Items in Excel Rendering
Report items are items other than data regions (tables, matrices, lists, and charts). If a report item is in a container, such as a rectangle or list, the coordinates for the item are relative to the container. For example, if the report item is defined in a rectangle, the coordinates of the individual item are relative to the rectangle.
This topic describes the rendering behavior when exporting text boxes, rectangles, images, subreports, and actions to Microsoft Excel.
Text boxes
When the Textbox element is rendered in Excel, the data type may be converted to one of the data types available in Excel. Numeric values convert to the value of the number with full precision, and a period as a decimal separator. Boolean values of 0 and 1 convert to the strings "true" or "false".
Rectangles
Rectangles are converted to groups of cells. If rectangles contain other items, the rectangle becomes a region of cells, and the border and background color of the rectangle is applied to the region of cells. The borders are converted to cell borders, and the background is converted to background colors for the contained cells. This applies to all items that act as rectangular free-form layout areas, including lists, the body, the page header, and page footer.
Page breaks are translated according to the values of the attributes PageBreakAtStart and PageBreadAtEnd defined in the rectangle item. If there are no items contained in the rectangle, no page breaks are created.
Images
An image can be a logo or picture, or it can be a picture that is repeated with rows of data. You can also use an image as a background for certain report items. When you use a URL-based image in a report, the image item contains a URL that points to an image on the report server or a separate Web server. When images are rendered to Excel, they are rendered as static pictures.
Subreports
A subreport is an item in a report that points to another report on the report server. When rendering to Excel, subreports are rendered as rectangles in the current report, containing the contents of the other report. The subreport is rendered on the same Excel worksheet as the parent report, not on a separate Excel sheet. However, a subreport is not rendered if there is no data associated with the subreport.
The border of a subreport is rendered, and the name given to the report item may not be unique across the subreports.
Actions
When a hyperlink, a bookmark link, or a drillthrough link is created on a report, an Action element is created in Report Definition Language (RDL). The following table describes how Excel translates actions.
| Action child elements | Excel translation |
|---|---|
Hyperlink |
Becomes a hyperlink in the worksheet. |
BookmarkLink |
Becomes a hyperlink pointing to the name of the report item. |
Drillthrough |
Becomes a hyperlink pointing to the report referenced by the drillthrough link. |
For more information on the Action element, see Action Element (RDL).
See Also
Concepts
Design Considerations for Report Rendering
Other Resources
Reporting Services Programming