Formatting a Report (Reporting Services)

Format the Date

The Date field displays date and time information by default. You can format it to display only the date.

To format a date field

Click the Design tab.
Right-click the cell with the [Date] field expression and then click Text Box Properties.
Click Number, and then in the Category field, select Date.
In the Type box, select January 31, 2000.
Click OK.

Format the Currency

The LineTotal field displays a general number. Format it to display the number as currency.

To format a currency field

Right-click the cell with the [LineTotal] field expression and then click Text Box Properties.
Click Number, and in the Category field, select Currency.
If your regional setting is English (United States), the defaults should be:
- Decimal places: 2
- Negative numbers: ($12345.00)
- Symbol: $ English (United States)
Select Use 1000 separator (,).
If the sample text is: $12,345.00, then your settings are correct.
Click OK.

Change Text Style and Column Widths

You can also change the formatting of the header row to differentiate it from the rows of data in the report. Lastly, you will adjust the widths of the columns.

To format header rows and table columns

Click the table so that column and row handles appear above and next to the table.

The gray bars along the top and side of the table are the column and row handles.
Point to the line between column handles so that the cursor changes into a double arrow. Drag the columns to the size you want.
Select the row containing column header labels and from the Format menu, point to Font and then click Bold.
To preview your report, click the Preview tab. It should look something like this:

Format Number

=Format(CLng(Fields!MyField.Value),"###,###,###,##0")

To solve this problem we can set =Fields!MyField.Value as the Value and set ="###,###,###,##0" as the Format. You can find the "Format" under the "Appearance" of the properties window.

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just to clarify a little, to the way shown above:

1. right click a table cell or textbox
2. select expression
3. enter what frank suggested

the other way:
1. select a table cell or textbox
2. hit F4 (for properties)
3. in Format property type in yyyy/MM/dd HH:mm

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want to see my date in American format (MM/DD/YYYY) not uk (DD/MM/YYYY).

After adding "English United Kingdom" the Language Setting of the Client Browser, it is displaying date format in UK Format.

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Working with Dates in Reporting Services

As with any other technology ( eg. SQL , C# ), you always find people running into problems with processing of dates. I was asked today by a colleague "How to I format dates when using the Date Picker and sending it through to a stored procedure" ? Let's have a look ....

1) The FormatDateTime command

This is pretty easy to use, but maybe a bit limiting. You can specify 1 of 4 formats using the command arguments. Let's say we have selected a date such as 10th April 2007 , our results will be as follows :

Command	Result
FormatDateTime(Parameters!Date.Value,1)	Tuesday, April 10, 2007
FormatDateTime(Parameters!Date.Value,2)	4/10/2007
FormatDateTime(Parameters!Date.Value,3)	12:00:00 AM
FormatDateTime(Parameters!Date.Value,4)	00:00

...but the better way to do it would be to use ...

2) The Format command and specify the exact format you require. For example...

Command	Result
Format(Parameters!Date.Value,"dd-MM-yyyy")	10-04-2007
Format(Parameters!Date.Value,"dd/MM/yyyy")	10/04/2007
Format(Parameters!Date.Value,"MMM-dd-yyyy")	Apr-10-2007
Format(Parameters!Date.Value,"MMM-dd-yy")	Apr-10-07