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Any situation worth understanding is confusing
 
Institute of IT Trainers - Freelance Trainer of the Year 2006 & 2009
Liverpool Business Connect Member
  Maximum Impact Solutions Limited - Reporting Solutions, Creating Answers
Reporting Solutions - Creating Answers, Crystal Reports, Dashboarding (Xcelsius) & SQL Reporting Services

Crystal Reports, Xcelsius (Dashboarding) and SQL Reporting Services Blog

Welcome to our blog of scribbles and musings designed to share with YOU our insights, knowledge and experience from training, designing and writing reports using Crystal Reports, SQL Server Reporting Services and Crystal Dashboarding (Xcelsius) for our customers.

Please contact us with any questions, queries and/or issues that may have arisen from your use of Crystal Reports, SQL Reporting Services and/or Crystal Xcelsius in response to out blog posts.

We love nothing better to be challenged by something that makes others scratch their heads Feed ME!!!!

13
April

How Do I Add More than on Table on a page from the same data in SSRS?

During a recent SQL Server Reporting Services report writing project there was a need to have 3 tables from the same dataset object on the page.

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25
February

How Do I Sort Field with Null Values in SQL Server Reporting Services 2019?

The client was creating a report in SQL Server Reporting Services 2019, and wanted to sort fields that contained Null Values.

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02
June

How Do I Do a Sum Distinct Records in SQL Server Reporting Services?

I have had a couple of clients recently asking the same question "How Do I Do a Sum Distinct Records in a SQL Server Reporting Services Tablix/Matrix?

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22
May

How Do I Sort Alphanumerical Field Values in SQL Server Reporting Services 2019?

I recently had a client contact me with an issue sorting a alphanumerical field with in SQL Reporting Services Tablix object.

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22
July

How Do I return the Previous Row Value in SSRS 2017

I recently had a client contact me, who wanted to return the previous row data.

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18
June

Why is Hide Duplicates in SQL Server Reporting Services Not Working?

A client contacted me recently, whose report displayed an extra blank line when hiding duplicates in the SSRS report

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09
April

What's this GetChar Function in SQL Server Reporting Services?

During a recent SSRS report writing project, I am came across this GetChar function.

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18
February

Why is my VAL function not working in SQL Server Reporting Services?

I recently had a client contact me, because the VAL function in the report was not working properly

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21
January

How Do I create a bespoke NoRowsMessage?

I had a client contact us asking "How do I create an customised NoRowsMessage?

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04
December

How Do I Find Missing Correlating Data?

I had a client contact me asking how they could find the sales agents who had not made any sales

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19
November

Why Does my PDF Export have Additional Blank Pages in SQL Server Reporting Services?

One of the most common questions clients ask me when exporting SQL Server Reporting Services reports to PDF is "Why are there extra blank pages?"

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15
October

Why is My SSRS Reports Still Showing the Old Data, even after the Stored Procedure has been Updated?

One of my clients contacted me with a problem that when the stored procedures was updated the reports still returned the original data.

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17
September

How Do I Add Stars to my SQL Server Reporting Services Reports?

Over the last few months I have has a number of clients, asking "How Do I Add Stars to my SSRS reports?"

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17
August

How Do I Exclude Blank Lines in Concatenated Fields in SQL Server Reporting Services

During a SQL Server Reporting Services consultancy session, the client asked "How do I exclude blank lines in a concatenated address field?"

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31
July

How Do I Apply Conditional Formatting to a Bar Chart in SQL Server Reporting Services?

During a recent SQL Server Reporting Services workshop, a delegate asked "How do I apply conditional formatting to a bar chart?"

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21
June

How Do I Hide the First Row of an SQL Server Reporting Services Table?

During a recent training session a delegate asked "How do I hide the first row of a SSRS table?"

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10
May

What's this BIGMUL function in SQL Reporting Services?

You know when you come across a function in any application, and it leaves you scratching your head?

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13
April

How Do I Insert a Page Break After a Specific No of Rows in a Table in SSRS?

I recently have had a couple of SQL Server Reporting Services clients asking, "How Do I add a Page Break After x No of Records in Tablix Objects?"

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29
March

A Question of Rounding in SQL Server Reporting Services

Over the last few months, clients keep on asking me the difference between the SSRS Ceiling() and Floor() functions.

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08
February

How Do I Display Bespoke Values on SSRS Graph Data Points?

During a recent SQL Server Reporting Services training session, one of the delegates asked "How do I add different values to the data points on the graph"

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14
November

How Do I Generate an SQL Server Reporting Services Report List

I was recently started a SQL Reporting Services writing project, and the first thing I needed to do was to carry out an audit of their current reports.

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13
August

SQL Reporting Services Missing in Action in Visual Studio 2017

Recently I have had a number of clients contacting me because on upgrading to Visual Studio 2017, they cannot migrate their SQL Server Reporting Services Project

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13
February

Where's my DataSet Panel in SSRS designer gone???

I have had a number of clients, contacting me with regards to the DataSet panel in SSRS design view disappearing

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08
December

What is the FIX function in SQL Services Reporting Services?

So I was just playing around in SQL Reporting Services 2008 looking at some of the functions, when I came across the FIX function

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11
November

How Do I Show the 3 Largest Sales Figures per Group on One Row in SQL Server Reporting Service 2008 R2

During a recent SQL Server Reporting Services 2008 R2 consultancy, the delegate wanted to know how to display the 3 highest values per group as a single record.

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26
August

How Do I a Set Number of Records per Page in SSRS?

During a recent SQL Server Reporting Services 2008 report writing project, the client wanted a report that displayed a specific number of records per page.

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13
July

How Do I Only Display the Page Headings on the First Page in SQL Reporting Services 2008 R2?

During a recent SQL Reporting Services Consultancy session with one of my clients, they wanted to know how to only display the page headings on the first page of the report

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13
May

How Can I Get All the Dates between 2 Parameter Dates

During an SQL Server Reporting Services consultancy, the client needed to see the performance of the sales team over a period of time

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14
December

How Do I Calculate Averages in SQL Server Reporting Services?

During a recent SQL Server Reporting Services report writing projectI noticed that the inbuilt Avg SSRS function returned the wrong value.

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04
August

How Do I Create a Banded Report with Grouped Tables

During a recent training course a delegate asked "How do I create a banded report in a grouped table?"

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23
September

How Do I Automatically Refresh Reports in SQL Reporting Server 2008 R2?

During a recent SQL Server Reporting Services Consultancy the client asked "How do I get SQL Server Reporting Services 2008 R2 to automatically refresh the report when viewed within Report Manager?"

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11
August

SQL Reporting Services and Nevron

We have been so busy lately, that when we were asked about Nevron, we had to admit we had never heard of it!

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13
June

How Do I Display Zeros instead of Blanks in a Matrix in SSRS 2008?

During a recent SQL Server Reporting Services 2008 report writing project, the client wanted all the spaces of the matrix, to be replaced with zeros.

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13
May

How Do I Sort by Financial Year?

During a recent SQL Server Reporting Services 2008 report writing project, my client wanted the budget vs actuals charts and matrix months sorted by financial year instead of calendar year.

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13
March

How Do I Change the Bar Width in SSRS 2008?

During a recent SQL Server Reporting Services 2008 training session one of the delegates asked "How Do I Change the Bar Width of the Bar Chart?"

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13
January

How Do I Deal with Null Values in Address Formula Fields in SQL?

During a recent training session on of the delegates asked "How do I stop Null addresses, if one of the address fields is Null in the formula"?

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24
September

What I have been up to.....

As you can see, I have been very quiet on the blogging front, for the last couple of months, so I thought I would let you know what I have been upto...

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03
July

Tip: Making all the Page Header Section Heights the same in SQL Reporting Services 2008

A number of clients have asked "How do I ensure that all the page headers of the report are the same height in SQL Server Reporting Services 2008?"

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30
May

How Do I Rotate Text in SQL Reporting Services 2008 R2?

Over the last couple of training sessions, a number of delegates have asked the same question, "How do I rotate the text in Tablix and Matrix cells within SQL Server Reporting Services 2008 R2?"

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23
May

How Do I Display Double Lines in Tablix Items in SQL Reporting Services?

During a recent SQL Reporting Services 2008 (SSRS 2008) report design project, the client needed to display the totals within a Tablix report item with bottom double line border

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21
May

How Do I Get Sub-Reports to work in SQL Reporting Services 2008 R2?

Over the last couple of weeks I have had a number of clients ask me the same thing when creating reports with sub reports in SQL Server Reporting Services 2008 R2, which is how do I get them to work?

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13
May

How Do I Control the Headers and Footers based on Varying Record Report Items in SQL Reporting Services 2008

During a recent SQL Server Reporting Services 2008 report design project, the client wanted different headers and footers, based on different information on the page, of various lengths.

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29
April

How Do I Ensure the Latest Data is Being Returned in BIDS SQL Reporting Services 2008?

Recently I have had a number of clients contacting me due to their reports displaying the wrong data, when the report is previewed in BIDS SQL Server Reporting Services 2008

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20
April

How Do I Start the Page Numbering on a Page that is not the First Page in SQL Server Reporting Services 2008?

During a recent training session, one of the delegates asked "How do I start and display my page numbering on the third page of the report in SQL Server Reporting Services 2008 (SSRS 2008)?"

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19
March

How Do I Extract all the Characters before a Specific Character in a String Field?

During a recent Crystal Reports XI report design project two tables needed to be linked together, where in one table the field only contained the user name, in the second table the field contained the user email address, which consisted of the user name, plus the organisational domain.

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07
March

How Do I Extract Characters from within a String Field in SQL Reporting Services 2008?

During a recent SQL Server Reporting Services 2008 report design project, one of my clients needed to extract some text after the last instance of a specific character of a string field.

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25
February

How Do I Remove the Extra Pages in SQL Reporting Services 2008?

I have had a number of clients of the past few months all asking the same question, "How Do I Remove the Extra Pages in SQL Server Reporting Services 2008?"

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14
February

How can I Add Multiple Conditions to the Visibility Property in SQL Reporting Services 2008?

During a recent SQL Server Reporting Services 2008 (SSRS 2008) report design project, a client asked "How can I Add Multiple Conditions to the Visibility Property of a Report Item?"

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13
September

How Do I Format the Y-axis on a Percentage Stacked Chart in SQL Reporting Services 2008?

A number of clients have recently asked me "How Do I Format the Y-axis on a Percentage Stacked Chart in SQL Reporting Services 2008?" To show the correct percentage scale.

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16
August

Tip: Indicators in SQL Reporting Services (SSRS) 2008

Over the last couple of weeks a number of clients have had issues getting their indicators to work in SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) 2008.

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07
August

How Do I Return All the Values of a Group on a Single Line in SQL Reporting Services 2008?

During a recent SQL Server Reporting Services 2008 project I was asked "How Do I Return All the Values of a Group on a Single Line, separated with a vertical line using SQL?

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17
April

How Do I Display the HTML Formatting within a String Field in SQL Reporting Services 2008?

During a recent conversation with a client I was asked how do I display the HTML formatting of a string field in SQL Server Reporting Services 2008?

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10
April

How Do I Concatenate the Year to a Custom Financial Year Start Date in SQL Reporting Services

During a current report design consultancy using SQL Server Reporting Services 2008 I was asked how do I concatenate the year to a custom financial year start date?

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20
March

How Do I Display ALL for Multi Value Dynamic Parameters in SQL Reporting Services 2008 R2?

During a recent training workshop I was asked the question how do I display the words "ALL", when the Select All option of an multi value dynamic parameter is checked in SQL Server Reporting Services 2008 R2?

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17
March

How Do I Display the Field Headings on all pages of the SQL Reporting Services 2008 Tablix?

During a number of recent training courses I was asked the question how do I get the tablix column headings to repeat on all the pages in SQL Server Reporting Services 2008?

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30
January

How Do I Create a Custom Chart Palette in SQL Reporting Services 2008

During a recent SQL Reporting Services 2008 training session, one of the delegates asked how one would create a custom palette, for a chart

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16
November

How Do I Concatenate Fields with Null Values in SQL Reporting Services?

During a recent training session a delegate asked how do I concatenate fields that contain null values correctly.

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14
September

How Do I Control the Image Visibility in SQL Reporting Services 2005?

Last week a client asked How do I control the visibility of an image based on the company viewing the report in SQL Server Reporting Services 2005?

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26
August

How Do I Create a Custom Report Template in SQL Reporting Services 2005?

A client asked how does one create and use a custom designed report template in SQL Server Reporting Services 2005?

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11
August

How Do I Solve the Divide by Zero Issue in SQL Server Reporting Services?

A client of mine emailed a report, designed in SQL Server Reporting Services 2005, that when compiled produced a "Divide by Zero" error message. Here is a solution to this problem.

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03
August

How Do I Find All the Products that Have Not Generated Sales?

A client recently asked me How do I create an SQL statement that lists all the products that have not generated any sales, that can be used with either Crystal Reports or SQL Server Reporting Services?

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21
July

How Do I Change the Default Chart Palette Colours in SQL Reporting Services 2005?

Recently a client asked how do I change the default colours of the SQL Server Reporting Services 2005 chart palette?

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07
July

How Do I Change the format of a DateTime field in SQL?

A client has just asked me how does one format a datetime field in SQL to display the date in the format dd/mm/yyyy?

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11
May

Comments, Comments, Comments

I am currently working on a project designing a suite of reports for a new client, using SQL Reporting Services. Obviously over time the number of reports will increase, and it is so easy to forget why the report was designed in the first place.

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24
April

Effective Report Planning

Before designing reports there are a number of things that must be considered first. This post covers some of the factors, that report designers need to consider.

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13
April

How Do I Add Multiple Sorts to a Tablix Object in SQL Report Builder 2008?

I was contacted by a client, using SQL Server Report Builder 2008, enquirying How does one add multiple sorts to a Tablix object?

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31
March

The MOD function

Designers can use this function to create a banded report, to make list reports easier to read.

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