Can Report (rdlc) Table or Matrix Column Width Be Set at Runtime?

 

Using an rdlc report in ReportViewer, I need to create a table or matrix where the number of columns and the kinds of data displayed in the columns changes with each report.  For example, in one report, the second column may hold price information.  In another report, the second column may hold a product description.

Obviously, a column with descriptive text needs to be wider than a column with price info. So, the column widths can't be firmly set in the designer.  But, I can't figure out how to change the column width during runtime, in either the Table control or Matrix control.  (I prefer the matrix, but can use either.)

Setting the header or details textbox CanGrow property to true doesn't help for two reasons.  One is that (in a Table control) the textbox grows in width only to the first linebreak opportunity (a space between words).  The other is that we need to export the report to PDF and even if the CanGrow widens the column in the viewer, when exported to PDF the column returns to the design width.

Tried setting the Width property of the column to an expression, but it wouldn't let me.

Spent a week on this.  Is it possible?  If not, if I switched to a Crystal Report (don't want to, I'm Crystal-Report challenged), is there a way to make it work?

There is one very ugly workaround: the Hidden property of a table column can be set to an expression.  I could set up the table with two or three columns of different widths for each column in the final report.  Depending on the column header ('Price', 'Description', etc.), certain columns would be hidden based on how wide a column was needed.  For example, there could be two design columns (one narrow, one wide) for column two of the final report.  If the heading on column 2 is Description, make the narrow column hidden so only the wide column displays with the Description text.

Seems it would be better to set the column widths, if possible.

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I never found a pretty solution, so went with an ugly one.

The original ugly workaround I proposed worked great for viewing the report on-screen, but did not work when exporting to PDF.  By having three columns for every visible column in the final report, the table was 22 inches wide in design view, forcing the report to be 22 inches wide.  The export to PDF didn't like that, creating lots of extra blank pages.

The ugly solution that worked was creating multiple tables to acccount for all varieties of column widths and number of columns The tables are stacked on top of one another.  The "Hidden" property in each table is set to an expression that checks a report parameter to determine if that table is hidden or visible [=IIF(Parameters!paramTableId.Value = 33, False, True)].  The parameter value is passed in from the codebehind on the aspx page that holds the ReportViewer. 

Currently there at 23 tables in the stack.  All of the tables are centered horizontally.  When I had just 5 or 6 tables, the non-hidden table would appear on the screen centered in the report.  With 23 tables, the non-hidden table is left justified.  But, in both scenarios, the table is centered in the PDF version, which is all I care about.

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