In SSRS, can you set a rectangle to grow with its contents?

Question

I'm working on a report in SSRS (SQL Server Reporting Services) right now, and I'm having a problem getting a rectanlge I draw on the page in the report designer to grow. Basically, I've got a rectangle drawn, and then I put a text field inside of it. The contents of this text field can be either very short or very long, so I want it to grow to accomodate its contents.

But when I enter the long text, the textbox grows and then sticks outside of the lines of the rectangle. From the SSRS documentation I read, it says rectangles should grow to contain the items within them, and that those items are "peers".

What gives?

Answer 1

The only way I can get a textbox to breach the border of a rectangle is if the textbox is not actually inside the rectangle, but instead is underneath it.

When the textbox is inside the rectangle, and when the textbox property CanGrow = TRUE then the textbox and its rectangle both grow vertically downward to accommodate large amounts of text.

Answer 2

I was seeing the same issue. My problem was that I had the text boxes first and then put the rectangle around it and sent it to the back. Once I dragged the text boxes off and then back onto the rectangle, it grew properly.

Answer 3

You can tell whether the textbox is in the rectangle or on the body (e.g.) by looking at the Parent property of the textbox. If the textbox is outside of the rectangle, it works well to cut the textbox and paste it into the rectangle. I've had issues at times when trying to drag objects into (onto) a rectangle.

Answer 4

Maybe a little late - but it may help someone later.

The rectangle can serve as a container.

To turn the rectangle into a container, create the rectangle first. Just drop your other child-object elements (e.g. lists, tables, etc) into the container.

However, you cannot create the container after creating the child objects.