Subreports

Jeff Eib · June 2018

I hope that I am providing enough information.

I am trying to design a report to generate a packing slip for shipments from my company. Each packing slip will describe one product, but could have multiples of that product, each with its own serial number. I need to list each serial number shipped as a list, but have the description printed only once. I am trying to use a subreport to show the list of serial numbers. However, when I preview the report, the subreport is moved from where it is designed.

As a further note, I need to copies of the packing slip to be printed side by side on one sheet of paper. I designed the report to show both copies, and for the most part, this works. The only problem is with the location of the subreports.

I have attached screen captures of the report in design, and the report in preview. As you can see, the subreports have moved from where I thought they would print based on the design to completely new positions.

Any assistance on what I am missing will be greatly appreciated.

Jeffrey Eib

Jeff Eib · June 2018

This is probably the most unresponsive forum I have asked questions from.

Anyway, for an update to what I have tried while trying to solve my problem.

1. I played with the settings of the sub_report, trying different combinations, to no avail.

2. Doing some research, I found a possible solution on one of the Google forums. Instead of putting the individual fields on the main form, I replaced the description sections of the packing slip with sub-reports containing the same fields. My first attempt offered no change.

2. I then tried inserting a child band to hold the sub-reports instead of putting them in the master data band. Again, this resulted in no change.

4. When I originally designed the report, the sub-reports on the right half of the page were copies of the sub-reports on the left half, pasted into the right half. On the chance that this might be causing the problems, I deleted the sub-reports on the right half and replaced them with new sub-reports created from scratch. Lo and behold, the column of serial numbers on the right half of the page now print in the correct location. However, the column of serial numbers from the left half of the page continue to be moved to the center of the page. Except for the values for the Left property of the two sub-reports, they are identical.

I have attached images of the latest design and preview for the form. The images show that I have partially solved the problem, but I have no idea why the left sub-report keeps migrating to the center of the page instead of staying to the left where it is designed.

Any help, even if it is just a possible explanation of why this is happening, or a comment saying that there is no way to do what I intend, would be greatly appreciated.

Jeff Eib

Jeff Eib · June 2018

OK. Typing in my last reply made me thinking about the fact the column was being moved to the center of the page. The master data on those sub-reports only contained one field, the serial number. In both of the sub-reports, I set the Align field of the field to baClient. Despite the fact that both sub-reports were designed to be 1.25 inches wide, and that the serial number field of both sub-reports had the same value for the Align field, when previewed or printed, the left sub-report used the baClient alignment to mean "of the whole page width", and not just "of the sub-report width". This caused the column, which had a hAlign of haCenter, to be centered across the entire page. When I changed the Align value to baNone for the left column's serial number field, everything moved to the position at which it was designed. I don't understand why the left column used the entire page for its alignment, but the right hand column only used the sub-report width. It seems unintuitive. At least I can continue with the rest of the project, confident that we will be printing properly formatted packing slips.

Thanks for listening to my process.

Jeff

Subreports

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