Balanced columns

Balanced columns

Posted by: paul on 24 July 2023, 10:28 pm EST

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  paul

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  Posted 24 July 2023, 10:28 pm EST - Updated 24 July 2023, 10:42 pm EST

  How do I achieve balanced columns in ActiveReports? When using multi-column layouts I wish the data to fill all columns more or less equally on the final page:

  This is a basic requirement for report and document layout.

  For example, in a sub-report with, say, three columns, if the text does not fill the depth of the parent page, you just get a single long column on the left and columns two and three are empty. This is, and looks, all wrong.

  Any advice would be gratefully received.

  Kind regards,

  Paul

  

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  anand.sinha

  

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  Posted 25 July 2023, 8:28 pm EST

  Hi Paul,

  Unfortunately, AFAIK this is not possible to achieve in ActiveReports.

  Apologies for the inconvenience.

  Regards,
  
  Anand

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  paul

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  Posted 26 July 2023, 12:00 am EST

  Thanks for your quick reply Arnand.

  May I suggest that this should be a feature for consideration by your development team.

  In the Adobe *InDesign *document processing package you can mark columns as [Balanced] whereby the final page will spread the text over the number of columns available. There is also an option to say whether you want the spread to be done at the line or paragraph level. If the latter, some additional depth may be required because column breaks are performed only at the end of paragraphs i.e. paragraphs are kept together.

  Kind regards,

  Paul

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  anand.sinha

  

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  Posted 26 July 2023, 9:51 pm EST

  Hi Paul,

  We have escalated your request as an enhancement to our development team [Ticket ID: AR-31282]. We’ll let you know of any updates on the same.

  Regards,
  
  Anand

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  anand.sinha

  

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  Posted 30 July 2023, 8:47 pm EST

  Hi Paul,

  Although, there’s no direct way to achieve this, however, our development team has suggested that if you are using small paragraphs or would like to divide content into columns based on paragraphs you can also try using a List in a Multicolumn report (see attached sample).

  However, currently, there is no direct way to balance/spread the text into multiple columns.

  Could you help us understand whether you are trying to split the text based on paragraph breaks or between paragraphs as well?
  
  It would be helpful if you could share a sample report along with dummy data so we could understand your use case better.

  Thanks,
  
  Anand

  SampleRDLReport.zip