Introduction to Report Bands

What are Banded Reports in the Web Report Designer

Updated over a week ago

When designing a report, you must understand that they consist of bands

A band contains report controls (like labels, fields, or graphs) and defines where these controls are located on the report. 

The following image has three bands: TopMargin1, Detail1, BottomMargin1. 

The thing to understand about bands is that they repeat on every page. For example, the TopMarginBand1 represents the top margin of the report. As you can imagine, there would be a top margin for every page of the report. This band is repeated at the top of every page. Not every band will be repeated, but the majority of them do.


Common Band Types

The following image shows a report layout with common band types. 

  • Top Margin and Bottom Margin - These bands are usually "out-of-page" zones. You shouldn't put anything into these margins. 

  • Report Header - This band is the report's first displayed band. Use this band to display the report's name, company logo, date of creation, username, etc. This band will not repeat on each page! 

  • Report Footer - Note that the Report Footer is placed before the Page Footer on the report's last page. You can use the Report Footer band for report summaries or conclusions. Just like the Report Header, the Report Footer will not repeat on each page. 

  • Page Header and Page Footer - These bands will repeat on every page at the top and bottom of each page. They are used to display information that should appear on every page, for example, the page number.


Detail Band

Every report starts with one detail band and you cannot delete it. The detail band repeats for every record in the base table chosen for the report (unless the data is filtered).  

In the below illustration, the Contacts table was chosen for the base table. On the left, you can see the Detail1 band has the RecordID field as well as the Name field dragged in. 

On the right is the output of the report. It displays the Record ID and Name for every record in the table. 

In this case, you can imagine the Detail1 band as a row, and you can style that row any way you wish. That same style will be applied to ever record that is printed out. 


Adding a Band

To add a new band to the report, first select the report itself, or select a band. You can do this within the report's design surface, or selecting it in the Properties panel. 

Beneath the ▼ Actions, you will find a number of icons which will insert a band.

A number of these bands have not been discussed. For more information on bands, please see detailed documentation on bands on DevExpress's website


Removing a Band

You can remove a band by selecting it in the report, and then clicking the delete icon (X) on the top, Main Toolbar.


Further Information on Bands

For more information on report designer bands, please see the DevExpress article "Introduction to Banded Reports".

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