Report Layout - forcing absolute position

Greetings,

I have a report with all of the required data, but am having trouble with the positioning of the elements.

The report has header-like, body and footer-like sections but I am forced [I think] into using only the body section of the report since SSRS won't let me put fields in the header/footer area (msg: fields cannot be used in headers or footers).

btw - my report is always one page... never more. The center section (a table) may change in number of rows, but it will always fit on the page.

So -- easiest way to ask this is: how can I lock the position of a field (or text box) to ensure it will always be in the same spot (acting like a header / footer)?

Thanks in advance.

If you use a table, you could use the table header and footer which would remain consistently in line with the table body of data. It really depends on the details of your needs.|||

I think that since I'm inside the "body" section, it is in a dynamic "flow" mode... so regardless of what I put in the middle, I always want a certain textbox (that has a data field in it) to sit at the absolute bottom of the page...

know what I mean?

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Just a note in case some cool MS guys are watching....

This is really a problem when migrating from Foxpro reports to SSRS. This is something you want the public to do (so foxpro can die a happy and content death), but yo uaren't making it easy.

The biggest thing I see so far [after attacking only one complex report] is the inability to make headers / footers use database fields... something that you can do in the dying product called foxpro...

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I think I need some more info. Since this is in the footer, I'm not sure why you can't use one of the aggregated (First, Sum, etc.) references to the field. If it isn't aggregated, I don't quite get how it is meaningful in the context of the footer. If the data in the footer is the same for the whole report, you can just setup a parameter that receives the value and then display the parameter value in the footer.

Anyway, more details on the data would help.

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In this case, we have a form that gets printed with the same basic "body" data, but different addresses in the [typical] header area, and dynamic "form number", "who's copy", etc in the footer.

So, I have one form that I can feed a dataset that fills ALL of these fields in for the multiple copies.

One might be (variables in red):

Form# 10001
Copy: Original

second copy would be:

Form# 10001b
Copy: File

So even in this simple environment, I might need these two lines at the absolute bottom of the page.... but they can [currently] move based on how many lines end up in the "body" table and change based on which copy's data I send to it.

One option I am considering is to fill the table full with blank lines to ensure correct placement... but that's more of a bandaid untilI figure out the right way to lock a textbox in place.

Hope this helps -- thanks for the consideration....

|||I think you may be able to just stretch down the size of the report in design veiw to be the height of the printable area for the report. Then place the "footer" fields at the bottom. If it doesn't keep your exact placement then you may want to use a Rectangle from the toolbox, and make it the size of the whole printable report. Then place your report objects inside where you want them.