I have a report that I created that has 8 columns and 30 rows. My boss wants the rows to not only have an alternate row color (which I have applied with a formula) but also a border as well. This is not a problem except I am working with very limited space and a lot of information that I am trying to display. My biggest issue is that the Customer Name field is so long that it needs to be set to “can grow”. When I do that and run the report, the one field set to “can grow” is taller than all of the fields that don’t need to be set to “can grow” because there is not much data in them. The alternate row color is perfect because it actually applies a color to the full row. The borders, however, are applied to each field and I see no other way of doing it unless there is a formula that I can use. Can anyone help me with this? I have browsed tons of forums and books and I have found no one that has had the same problem yet.
If you set the can grow option then definitely the Customer Name field would go into the next line where as all others will be in the same line. So what exactly you want to achieve now? Sorry I actually couldnt understand what exactly you were looking for.
Is there a way to get the other fields that are not set to “can grow” to match the height of the field that does go down to the next line? Basically I am trying to get the borders that I put on each field to be the same height in each row and if a field pushes down to the next line, the border on that field does as well however the others do not. It looks really bad. Is there maybe a way to set borders for the row instead of each individual field?
The only way I can think of doing this is by not using borders but boxes and lines.
Place a box around your fields then right click and format box.
Tick/check ‘Extend to bottom of section when printing’.
Place lines vertically between each field making sure they touch the top of of box (don’t worry about touching the bottom).
Now right click each vertical line and format line.
Tick/check ‘Extend to bottom of section when printing’.
Now when your can grow field is more than 1 line the fields will appear to have borders as you wish!
Wally you ROCK!!! I was doing this: and now I am doing this:
Thank you so much. What a pain in the butt though. I always thought that the point of using alternate row color was that you didn’t have to use borders but apparently my superiors think otherwise.
Thanks Wally. I have a lot of these types of reports. As you can see it is summer 2012 and still CR is no better. I guess it’s okay for simple reports but major reports that have to be used for serious goverment issue just doesn’t cut it.
(BOB member since 2004-03-19)
and now I am doing this: 
