RDL Editor - Canvas & Editing
Selecting
| To select | Do |
|---|---|
| An item | Click it |
| Several items | Shift+click to add/remove items from the selection |
| The next/previous item | Tab / Shift+Tab (cycles every item, including nested and hidden ones) |
| Nothing (page setup) | Click empty canvas or press Esc |
| Something buried | Use the Structure tab — see below |
Moving and resizing
- Drag to move. Dragging any member of a multi-selection moves the whole group.
- Drag the square handles to resize.
- Arrow keys move by 0.025in; Ctrl+Arrow moves by 1px for fine work; Shift+Arrow resizes (the Report Builder convention).
- Snap (toolbar toggle) quantizes drag/resize to a 0.05in grid.
- Items are kept inside the printable width while dragging, and a band grows automatically if you drop an item below its bottom edge — the editor never lets a drag produce geometry the report engine rejects.
Multi-select commands
With two or more items selected, the property pane switches to the multi-selection panel:
- Align left / right / top / bottom edges
- Same width / height as anchor (the anchor is the last plain-clicked item)
- Delete all
Alignment applies to items sharing the anchor's container (you can't meaningfully align across bands). Aligned edges aren't just cosmetic — they're what prevents merged cells when users export the report to Excel.
Copy, paste, duplicate
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| Ctrl+C | Copy the selected item (with everything inside it) |
| Ctrl+X | Cut (delete is reference-checked — see chapter 7) |
| Ctrl+V | Paste — into the selected Rectangle, else the current band, at a small offset |
| Ctrl+D | Duplicate in place |
Pasted items get fresh, report-unique names throughout (RDL requires uniqueness), so paste never creates an invalid layout.
Adding items
Pick a tool (Textbox, Image, Line, Rectangle, Table) and click where it should go — on a band, or inside a Rectangle to nest it. New lines come with a visible Solid stroke (an RDL line without one prints invisibly); new tables come as a 2×2 header+detail skeleton.
The Structure tab
A tree of every item in every band — the fastest way to find things in dense layouts:
- Click a row to select that item (the pane flips back to Properties).
- Hidden items carry a hidden badge.
- 👁 Highlight hidden items outlines every statically hidden item on the canvas in orange — invaluable, because "hidden does not mean unused": BC layouts park helper textboxes that feed page headers in hidden corners. Don't trust visual emptiness; trust the tree.
Inline text editing
Double-click a textbox or a table cell to edit its text in place — Enter commits, Esc cancels, Shift+Enter inserts a line break. Values starting with = are expressions (chapter 4).