Reporting Services: Hidden field

Question

Hello,

I have a question regarding an RDL file that I generaterd. I have several rectangles, which I gave a hidden property with a function.

When rendering the report, the following occures:

Rectangle 1 : hidden = false Rectangle 2 : hidden = true Rectangle 3 : hidden = true Rectangle 4 : hidden = false

Now rectangle 1 and 4 are shown, but there is an enormous gab between them, as rectangle 2 and 3 are hidden.

Is there a way that the hidden rectangles do not use space, so they are really invisible, instead of hidden?

Thanks!

Answer 1

I'm not sure such a property exists. Perhaps you could try dynamically setting the size of the rectangle instead?

That said I think it is more likely you are designing a report in an ineffective way. Is there perhaps a different way for you to achieve what you want?

What is it that you want?

Answer 2

Are the hidden areas eventually going to be expandable by some sort of user interaction? If so, you could set the Hidden = true, and set the ToggleItem to some other element to allow them to be opened/closed. This would have the rectangles collapsed and the extra space would not be taken.

One caveat - I'm not at the office to test this out right now, but they may need to be part of an overall table to do this. I'll check back when I get in and am able to test it.

UPDATE:

This solution works. Here are the steps I followed:

1. Add Rectangle to page
2. Add another element which will control Rectangle's visibility (this can be any element)
3. Set Rectangle Hidden property to true
4. The 'control' element will have a plus sign next to it which allows showing/hiding the rectangle