What determines the width of a control on a report using the wizard

[ryetee]

As per title
I'm producing a fairly simple report but the width of the controls looks pretty random. Fields with few characters seem to have large widths and others are truncated as the width is far too small. I know I can go in and change the control dimensions but it seems a bit painful. Am I missing anything?
Thanks

 

[CJ_London]

Assume you are talking about the wizard?

I don’t think it’s random, but won’t necessarily be based on actual data- it might look at the data type - but if you’ve specified a 255 char string it won’t know you will only ever be putting 5 chars in the field.

It also needs to take into account restrictions such as max form width

 

[ryetee]

Assume you are talking about the wizard?

I don’t think it’s random, but won’t necessarily be based on actual data- it might look at the data type - but if you’ve specified a 255 char string it won’t know you will only ever be putting 5 chars in the field.

It also needs to take into account restrictions such as max form width

Yes I am talking about the wizard *I hid that fact in the title!!). I have a date and time field for example. The report has a control that just about manages to get the month and a "/" in.

 

[MajP]

'm producing a fairly simple report but the width of the controls looks pretty random. Fields with few characters seem to have large widths and others are truncated as the width is far too small. I know I can go in and change the control dimensions but it seems a bit painful. Am I missing anything?

I assume you question is can you apply some settings to control what the wizard does. Probably not easily. The wizard uses a complex formula based on field data type, field size (i.e short text 10 vs short text 255), page width, printer settings. Does its best guess to make it close. The only thing I think could help is setting the field size for text fields. Do not leave it at 255 if is only going to hold 10max

If not familiar, you need to get familiar with the different layout tools, and especially the sizing. Then you can select multiple and do things very quickly.

 

[CJ_London]

I guess you could write your own wizard either to create the form and controls or to adjust the created form

Would need code to find the max width of each field based on say the first 100 rows _ but this would obviously require data

Would be different requirements for a continuous form v single form - for continuous you would also need to take into account the label width

 

[The_Doc_Man]

I believe the number of characters in the text of the Label associated with the control will contribute to the size.