Include NULL in each “Details Group” in SSRS

Question

In SSRS I have a List with, say, a table with two columns: name and number e.g.:

NAME NUMBER
John 123
John 456
John NULL

Name is never null, but number may be. In this case I want the report to include the NULL in each group, like this:

GROUP 1:
John NULL
John 123

GROUP 2:
John NULL
John 456

The SSRS, however, puts the null in a group on its own. How do I accomplish this?

Answer 1

You have told SSRS to group on the NUMBER column, so it will generate a separate group for each value in the NUMBER column and then display those rows. To get what you want, you have to make the data set have the rows you want.

Select Name, Number, cast(Number as varchar(50)) as displayvalue
From mytable 
UNION ALL
Select m.Name, m.Number, 'NULL' as displayvalue
From mytable m
Where exists(Select 1 from mytable where Name=m.Name and Number is NULL)
Group by Name, Number

Then group on the Number column but report on the DisplayValue column.