Using the Container report control in your Page/RDL report gives you more possibilities for visual presentation of your report. The Container is a visual element that is used as a container for other report controls. It highlights a part of a report and how the report controls appear inside it. The Container control has no data associated with it.
For Container control to work, you must drag the items into the Container instead of drawing it around the existing items.
The Container control can be used in several ways to enhance your reports:
- Group the report controls visually by placing them within the Container control.
- Anchor report controls, which may otherwise be pushed down by a vertically expanding data region.
- Create visual effects by adding borders to the Container control.
- Display an image behind a group of report controls by adding a background image.
Important Properties
Clicking the four-way arrow selects the control and reveals its properties.
| Property | Description |
|---|---|
| KeepTogether (RDL) | Change to True to have ActiveReports attempt to keep all of the repeated data together on one page. |
Container Dialog Properties
Name: Enter a name for the container that is unique within the report. This name can be called in code. You can only use underscore (_) as a special character in the Name field. Other special characters such as period (.), space ( ), forward slash (/), backslash (\), exclamation (!), and hyphen (-) are not supported.
Consume all white space during report rendering (RDL): Select this checkbox to have all white space consumed at report rendering.
Page breaks (RDL):
- Insert a page break before this container (RDL): Insert a page break before the container.
- Insert a page break after this container (RDL): Insert a page break after the container.
Background
Color: Select a color to use for the background of the container or select the <Expression...> option to open the Expression Editor.
Image: Specify the background image of container using Expression or Data Visualizer, or directly open the image file on your system.
Image Source: Select the location of the image for the background from External, Embedded, Database or select the <Expression...> option to open the Expression Editor.
MIME Type: Select the MIME type of the image.
Background repeat: Specify how the background image fills the space of the container.
Border
Style: Select a style for the border.
Width: Enter a value in points to set the width of the border or select the <Expression...> option to open the Expression Editor.
Color: Select a color to use for the border, or select the <Expression...> option to open the Expression Editor and create an expression that evaluates to a .NET color.
Rounded Rectangle: Specify the radius for each corner of the shape independently. Drag the handlers 
available at each corner of the shape to set the value of the radius at each corner.
Initial visibility
- Visible: The container is visible when the report runs.
- Hidden: The container is hidden when the report runs.
- Expression: Use an expression with a Boolean result to decide whether the container is visible. True for hidden, False for visible.
Visibility can be toggled by another report item: Select this check box to display a toggle image next to another report item. This enables the drop-down box below where you can specify the TextBox control that toggles the visibility of the container. The user can click the toggle item to show or hide this container.
Document map label: Enter an expression to use as a label to represent this item in the table of contents (document map).
Bookmark ID: Enter an expression to use as a locator for this container. You will then be able to provide a bookmark link to this item from another report control using a Jump to bookmark action.
The Data Output page of the Container dialog allows you to control the following properties when you export to XML:
- Element Name: Enter a name to be used in the XML output for this container.
- Output: Choose Auto, Yes, No, or Contents only to decide whether to include the contents of this container in the XML output. Choosing Auto exports the contents of the container only when the value is not a constant.
Container Control in RDL Dashboard Report
The Container is a visual element that is used as a container for other report controls. The properties and working is same as Page, RDL, or RDL Multi-Section Reports. The Container control in RDL Dashboard Report has following additional properties which controls the scroll behavior:
- Overflow: Sets the Overflow behavior (Visible, Hidden, Auto).
- Can Grow: Indicates whether the container area should grow (True) or not (False).
For the Container control to be scrollable, the above properties should be set as follows:
- CanGrow = False
- Overflow = Auto
The area up to which the data region in the container can expand depends on the container size; the rest of the data is scrollable.