Designing SSRS Reports that are Optimized for Printing

Designing a report so that, when printed, is not spread across multiple pages is a matter of setting your page properties and laying out the report within the ‘page’ boundaries. Follow these simple steps to ensure that your runtime report is always just right for printing. Note – the examples below are settings for A4 printing.

1. With the design tab open, right-click the white space outside of the design area. This is raise the menu in Fig 1.
   

   Fig 1. Selecting Page Properties
2. Choose Properties
3. This will open the Report Properties dialog box. Choose Layout (Fig 2.)
   

   Fig 2. The Page Properties Dialog box
4. Default layout is portrait. Switch the Page Width & Page Height values for Landscape mode.
5. If you want more real estate to work with on the page I suggest decreasing the margins to 0.5cm
6. Click OK.
7. Now resize the design area to the limits you have set in the properties dialog box. I.e. Pull the right edge of the ‘page’ to the 20 (Fig 3) tick mark and the bottom edge to the28 tick mark. Note – if you are including a Header/Footer, then you will need to cater for these by decreasing the bottom edge to about 25 (Fig 4). These settings are for Portrait mode, switch the height and width for Landscape.
   

   Fig 3. Setting the design surface width
   

   Fig 4. Setting the design surface height

Inserting Page-breaks

To create a page break manually in a report:

1. Place a rectangle item onto the design area at the place where you would like to insert a break.
2. Right click on the rectangle item and choose Properties.
3. Check the appropriate box on the General Tab for the Page Break settings (Fig 5)
   

   Fig 5. Setting the page break property

This will create a page break in the report at the point you specify. If you do not want to see the rectangle in you report, set the border properties to None.