Formatting a Report (Report Builder 1.0)

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.