SSRS Report Builder Design Layout Issues

Question

I can't seem to figure out why the design aspect of Report Builder/Report Designer is so messed up. Either I don't understand why it is doing this (most likely) or this is just the way it is.

Every Element I add to my report seems to not show up, align or look correct in the actual preview. If I add a line that snaps to another line which looks correct in design, looks totally incorrect in the final version. This is just one example of many, see below for images showing this behavior.

If I have a field (text box) tied to a data set and I position it in a certain area, it creates weird white space, is centered wrong or worse, when re-positioning the aforementioned line element, it seems to move other nearby elements in some erratic way. In the obfuscated example, the carrier fields are all basically stacked on top of each other, while in the preview they are spaced properly, but further down in the document if I do the same thing it ends up looking drastically different.

Is this a bug? Is this how RDL and Report Designer work? Is there some trick to element positioning? Is it relative to other elements, based off of foreground vs back ground elements? Does copying a text box to create more text boxes affect them in some way vs. creating a new element each time? I can't figure it out and do not know what to search for to find the answer to this.

This seems to be a "quirk" of how Report Designer works and I just haven't found the secret to it yet. If there is some exact positioning dialog available, I would prefer to use it instead of my mouse and these issues as I have a down-to-the-MM spec document for how this should be designed, but I cannot figure it out.

I am using Report Builder 14 for SQL Server 2016. It is a one page form (an ASN label) held within a table and all elements are within a rectangle element.

Is there an online resource or Report Designer guru who can point me in the right direction when it comes to this?

Example of the vertical line element looking incorrect in Preview/Final

Example of the vertical line element looking correct in Design View

EDIT: Like HOW does this even make sense?

Answer 1

SSRS renders so that the elements do not overlapp. In addition every element get enough space, vertical and horizontal. Basically you cant control this but there is a workaround.

If you put a rectangle in your report and place textboxes in that rectangle, they get rendered like you placed them. This also works in a tablix cell.

Another solution for your problem would be to display everything in one tablix cell. Your expression would be looking like this:

="Ship to: " & Fields!Adress.Value & ". Postal Code: " & Fields!PostalCode.Value

You even can add line breaks and tabs into that expression.