TextBox

TextBox can be used to display static text for titles, highlighting key information, descriptions and labels or dynamic text set based on expressions.

Add a textbox to the report

1. The textbox report item is listed in the item panel under the Basic Items category.
2. Drag and drop the textbox report item into the design area from the item panel.
3. Once you drop the textbox item into design area, respective textbox properties will be listed in the properties panel.

Properties

In textbox report item you can view and set properties for the textbox report item and each content in the textbox. (i.e Paragraph).

To view and edit overall textbox properties select the textbox report item in design area. Now, the textbox properties will be listed in the properties panel like below.

To view and edit the selected text properties, focus inside the text area. Now, the selected text properties will be listed in the properties panel like below.

Refer the Properties panel section before proceeding with the below properties.

Common properties

The following are the common properties for textbox and selected text:

Basic Settings

Font

The font family, font size, font color, font style, and font weight properties are used to style the content in the textbox. You can apply these font properties to the over all textbox content or specific content in a textbox.

Font Family

Supported font family names are listed in the drop-down under Basic Settings category. To change the Font Family of the textbox, choose the required font family from the drop-down list.

Font Color

To set font color for the content in the textbox, click on the color palette icon and choose the required color in the Color Palette

Font Size

Font size property allows you to increase the size of the text in the textbox. You can increase the font size using the numeric drop-down highlighted in below snap.

Font Styles

To change font style of the content in textbox, choose the required font style in the Font Style drop-down list. Following are the supported font styles:

• Default
• Normal
• Italic

Font Weight

To change the font weight of the content in textbox, choose the required type of font weight property from the drop-down list.

Text Decoration

Text decoration property sets the appearance of decorative lines on text.

• None - Produces no text decoration.
• Underline - Each line of text is underlined.
• Overline - Each line of text has a line above it.
• Line-through - Each line of text has a line through the middle.

Underline and Overline decorations are positioned under the text, line-through over it.

Format

Format property is used format an entire text box or specific text, numbers, expressions, or fields within the text box. To open the format dialog click on the icon highlighted in the below snap or you can type the format directly in the textbox.

To apply Number, Currency, Date, Time, Scientific, Percentage or Custom formats using format dialog follow the steps provided in Format section.

Link

You can specify a hyperlink inside the textbox content to link another report. Select the Enable Link checkbox, to enable the sub properties.

To set the hyperlink to a selected text or over all textbox follow the steps provided in Linking section.

Textbox properties

The following properties are only specific to the over all textbox item:

Alignment

Text Alignment

You can align the textbox content or specific content in a textbox using the Text Alignment property. Choose the respective text alignment property from the drop-down list to align the text in Left, Right, or Center positions.

Vertical alignment

You can align the textbox content or specific content in a textbox in Top, Middle, and Bottom positions. Choose the required vertical alignment property from the drop-down list.

Line height

Line height property is used to increase space between lines of a textbox. Increase or decrease the values in numeric dropdown to set the line height.

Appearance

The border style, color, width and background color properties are used to style the textbox and customize its appearance in the report design. These properties are listed under the Appearance category in the properties panel.

Background color

Using the background color property you can color the textbox background. To set background color using properties panel refer Background color section.

Border

Border properties are used to add or customize the border around a textbox item to visually separate items in the report design. To set border properties to the textbox item using properties panel refer Border Properties section.

Position

Position property is used to set the width, height, left and top position of the textbox in the report design. To handle these properties using properties panel refer Position section.

Data Element

Data element can be used to control visibility of a report item when exporting the report in XML format. The Data element properties are listed in the properties panel, under the Data Element category.

Name

You can assign a custom name for the textbox element using the Name field. The textbox will be exported with the provided name.

Note: The name cannot contain spaces, and it must begin with a letter followed by letters, numbers, or the underscore character (_).

Output

On exporting the report, the visibility of the textbox can be controlled using the Output property. Choosing the following options for the Output property will perform the respective operations:

• Auto or Output - Exports the textbox report item
• NoOutput - Does not export the textbox report item

Style

The Style property can be used to set the export type of the textbox report item. Choosing Auto or Element style will export the textbox as an XML element. The Attribute style will export the textbox as an XML attribute.

Visibility

Visibility property is used to conditionally show or hide the textbox report item on report preview or export action. To set visibility of textbox item using properties panel refer Visibility section.

Miscellaneous

Can Grow

Enable this property to expand the Textbox height vertically based on their content while previewing the text.

Can Shrink

Enable this property to shrink the Textbox height vertically based on their content while previewing the text.

Custom Attributes

This property can be used to set the values for textbox custom properties. To create and assign values for custom properties using properties panel refer Custom Properties section.

Tooltip

Tooltip property can be used to display informative text or value, when the user hovers over on the report item in report preview. To set tooltip for textbox report item using properties panel refer Tooltip section.

Document Map

A document map is a navigational feature that displays a separate side pane with set of navigational links in hierarchical structure when you view a report. A user can click the content in the list, to navigate to the report page that displays that item. Refer Document Map section to configure document map in the report design.

You can set the static or dynamic text as value for document map property. To set and reset dynamic text, refer Set Expression and Reset Expression section.

Bookmark

Bookmark links allows the users to navigate to different parts of a SSRS report. You can add bookmarks to each textbox, image, table or chart or to the unique group values displayed in a tablix which can direct the users to specified locations in the report. The value of bookmark property can be your own strings or an expression. Refer Bookmark section to configure bookmark in the report design.

Localization

Direction

The Direction property can be used to configure the content rendering direction for textbox report item. On preview, content in the textbox will be rendered based on the provided direction. You can set either Right-To-Left or Left-To-Right direction.

By default, content renders in Left-To-Right direction.

Left-To-Right report preview:

Right-To-Left report preview:

Language

The Language property can be used to set the locale on a textbox which determines the default formats for displaying report data in textbox. Select the required language in the Language property dropdown.

The language property on a text box overrides the language property on the report.

Selected Text properties

Markup Type

Markup type property can be used to render the selected text as plain text or HTML-formatted text. Select the required text and choose the type in Markup Type property dropdown.

Plain Text - Displays the selected text as simple text and the HTML will be treated as literal text.

HTML - Displays the selected text as HTML. If the expression value or values from dataset field contains a valid HTML tags, these tags will be rendered as HTML. Refer Add HTML in to a report section to import HTML using textbox.

Paragraph Settings

Text Alignment

You can align the textbox content or specific content in a textbox using the Text Alignment property. Choose the required text alignment property from the drop-down list.

Indent

To indent the text in the paragraph you can use this property. Increase/decrease the left and right indent in the text box using the numeric drop-down.

Space

Using this property you can add space before and after the paragraphs in the textbox.

Set expression

An expression can be set to few properties of the textbox report item to process the property values based on expressions. To set expressions to the textbox report item properties, refer Set Expression section.

Reset expression

To Reset the expression applied to a property, refer Reset Expression section.

Advanced properties

Few properties of the textbox report contains nested properties. To open and handle nested properties, refer Advanced Properties section.

Design RDL report using textbox

Refer Design RDL report using textbox section to learn how to position, style, format, link report, add hyperlink in a textbox.

Limitations

1. Pasting multiline text content from one TextBox report item into another TextBox report item will insert additional line breaks between each line of text.
2. In the designer, vertical text alignment won’t be applied while editing text; it will only take effect after the text field loses focus. The alignment will function as usual in preview.