Now that we have created out first SSRS report, it is time to make our reports presentable.
SSRS is really user friendly and customizing a report is very simple.
This is how our reports currently look:
Let us first add a title to the report so that the users/managers know what information to look for in the report.
Add a Title:
1.) Click in the area that says “Click to Add Title”
2.) Type “Product Information”
3.) Click on Run
This is how your report should look.
I don’t like the title in plain black. So, I am going to change the color of the title to dark blue.
Changing Color of the Title:
1.) Select title “Product Information”
2.) Select dark blue
Let us now make the headers – ID, Product Type and Product Detail:
a.) Bold
b.) Increase the font size
c.) Underline
Beautifying Headers:
1.) Select the header row.
2.) Select font size = 12
3.) Click on Bold icon.
4.) Click on underline icon.
Run the report and see how the report looks now.
Finally, lets add alternate band of colors to the report. You will know what I mean when we are done.
Alternate band of colors makes the report a little easier to read and also makes the report look a little more attractive.
Adding Alternate Band of colors to the report:
1.) Select the second row.
2.) On the right, under Properties tab, select expressions under Background color.
3.) Type “ = IIf(RowNumber(Nothing) Mod 2 = 0, “Silver”, “Transparent”)” without quotes
Expression:
= IIf(RowNumber(Nothing) Mod 2 = 0, “Silver”, “Transparent”) basically says that if row number is an odd number, the background color will be transparent. If the row number is an even number, the background color will be silver.
You can of course choose different colors if you like.
Stay Tuned for more articles on SSRS 🙂
