Panel

The Panel control is used to group individual report controls.

The Panel control is a container used to keep together any number of report controls. When controls are placed into a Panel, they can be moved, copied and printed as a whole. There are some limitations on Panel usage. One of them is that the Panel control does not have the Can Shrink property, and so cannot suppress the white space that appears when the controls inside are shrunk or collapsed. Also, the Panel cannot be used in different bands, unlike a cross-band control.

The Panel can also be used for page decoration, for example, to create borders around the report elements or add a uniform colour background.

In the Property Grid, the Panel 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 controls.

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 vertical anchoring style of the control, so that after page rendering it stays attached to the top control, bottom control, or both. The property setting is useful for data-bound controls located between upper and lower controls, which are able to resize depending on their contents.

Note:
If the Anchor Vertically property is set to Bottom or Both, the Can Grow property setting is ignored, and is not considered when 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.

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.

If a control does not fit on the next page either, then the control will be split despite this property's value.

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 further information, refer to Display Values from a Database (Bind Report Elements to Data).

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.

Design

(Name)

Determines a control's name, by which it can be accessed in the Property Grid and by 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.

Snap Line Padding

Specifies indent values used to render the contents of the band, 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.