Rich Text

The Rich Text control enables users to display, enter, and manipulate formatted text.

The control has functionality similar to the Label control, but formatting can be applied to any part of the text. The formatting options include font face, font styles and sizes, and font colour.

Rich text files (RTF) can be loaded to this control via its Smart Tag.

In the Property Grid, the Rich Text control's properties are divided into the following groups:

Appearance

Background Color

Specifies the background colour for the controls contained within the band. This option is also available on the Formatting Toolbar ().

Border Color, Border Dash Style, Border Width and Borders

Specifies border settings for the control.

Font

Specifies the font settings for the controls contained within the band. Some of these settings are available on the Formatting Toolbar.

Foreground Color

Specifies the text colour for the controls contained within the band. This option is also available on the Formatting Toolbar ().

Formatting Rules

Displays the Formatting Rules Editor which enables users to choose which rules should be applied to the band during report generation, and define the precedence of the applied rules. For further information, refer to Conditionally Change a Control's Appearance.

Padding

Specifies indent values used to render the contents of the controls.

Style Priority

Defines the priority of various styles (for example, background colour or border colour). For further information on style inheritance, refer to Styles Concepts.

Styles

Defines odd and even styles for the controls, as well as assigning an existing style to the them (or a newly created one). For further information on style inheritance, refer to Styles Concepts.

Behaviour

Anchor Vertically

Specifies the horizontal anchoring style of the control, so that after page rendering it stays attached to the left control, right control, or both. The property setting is useful for data-bound controls located between controls, which are able to resize depending on their contents.

Note:
That if the Anchor Vertically property is set to Bottom or Both, the Can Grow and Can Shrink properties values are ignored, and do not participate in calculating a final height value of this control.

Can Grow

If the check box is selected, the label height is automatically increased, if required, to fit the text. If there are other controls below the current label, they are moved down to prevent them from overlapping. Note that if a control overlaps the grown label, it is not moved down by the expanded label.

Can Shrink

If the check box is selected, and the text does not completely fill a label, the label height is decreased to the height of the text. If there are other controls below the current label, they are moved up to fill the gap. Note that if a control overlaps the shrunk label, it is not moved up under the shrunk label.

Keep Together

Specifies whether the contents of the band can be horizontally split across pages. Reporting attempts to keep band entries on a single page. In general, if the contents are too large to fit on a single page, then the band is started on a new page, and continues on the following page.

Process Duplicates

Determines the behaviour of the control when the data source contains consecutive repeating records. The records can be processed as is (when the property is set to Leave), suppressed except for the first entry (Suppress) and suppressed with a blank space printed instead of the repeated records (Suppress and Shrink).

Process Null Values

Determines whether to process Null (blank) values if they appear in the control data source. Null values can be processed as is (when the property is set to Leave), suppressed (Suppress) and suppressed with a blank space printed instead of the blank records (Suppress and Shrink).

Scripts

Contains events which can be handled with scripts. For further information on scripting, refer to Handle Events via Scripts.

Visible

Specifies whether the band is visible when using the print preview.

Data

(Data Bindings)

If the current report is bound to data, the property is used to bind control properties (Bookmark, Navigation URL, Tag and Text) to a data field obtained from the report data source, and to apply a format string. For more information, refer to Display Values from a Database (Bind Report Elements to Data).

Lines

Provides access to the Text property of the control, enabling users to input multiple lines of static text.

Tag

Adds additional information to a report, for example, the id, by which the report can then be accessible via scripts.

If the current report has a data source, the Tag property can be bound to a data field obtained from the data source. To do this, expand the (Data Bindings) property, and from the Tag.Binding dropdown list, select the required data field.

Null Value Text

Specifies the displayed label text when the value of the bound data field is null.

Text

Used to define a line of static text to be displayed. To type several lines of text, use the Lines property. Note that when the control is selected, the user may start typing the text, and it will be automatically entered into the in-place editor.

If the current report has a data source, the Rtf property (instead of Text) can be bound to a data field obtained from the data source. To do this, expand the (Data Bindings) property and in the Rtf.Binding dropdown menu, select the required data field. For further information on this, refer to Display Values from a Database (Bind Report Elements to Data).

Design

(Name)

Determines a control's name, by which it can be accessed in the Report Explorer, Property Grid or via scripts.

Layout

Location

Specifies the location of the control in report measurement units.

Size

Specifies the size of the control in report measurement units..

Snap Line Margin

Specifies the margins for the control, which are maintained when the control is aligned using snap lines.

Navigation

Bookmark and Parent Bookmark

These properties are used to create a hierarchical structure within a report called a document map.

If the current report has a data source, the Bookmark property can be bound to a data field, obtained from the data source. To do this, expand the Data > Data Bindings drop-down list and select the required data field. For further information, refer to Add Bookmarks.

Navigation URL and Navigation Target

Use the Navigation URL property to specify a URL for web browser navigation when the control is clicked. The web browser displays a page in a window or a frame as specified in the Navigation Target property.

Note:
A URL must have an appropriate prefix for example, 'http://'). Cross-references can be created within the report by assigning the name of the target control to the Navigation URL property, and setting the Navigation Target property to ‘_self'.

If the current report has a data source, the Navigation URL property can be bound to a data field obtained from the data source. To do this, expand the Data > Data Bindings drop-down list and select the required data field. For further information, refer to Create Hyperlinks.