SSRS Formatting
January 27th, 2008 | Published in SQL Server Reporting Services
I have been using SQL Server Reporting Services 2005 (SSRS for those of you who need another TLA – or FLA), and I have been really impressed with its flexibility and ease of use.
What I have NOT been impressed with is the documentation, or the lack thereof. Also, the lack of simple features that should have been included but are not.
The good thing is, like all Microsoft products, there is a way to do everything. You just have to use your noodle – or in my case – your Google.
The problem I had was a field that had a currency format of (12,345). Thats a negative number with no currency sign. Positive numbers would appear as 12,345. This seems simple enough – right?
Wrong.
I won’t go through what i had to do to figure this out, but you basically have to know how to tell the formatting what to do for negative numbers and what to do for positive numbers.
The formula turns out to be #,##0;(#,##0)
The secret is – a semicolon designates positive from negative. The left side is positive, the right side is negative.
So intuitive – I know.
The good news is I continue to find roadblocks in SSRS and I also continue to find fairly simple solutions. It just takes some persistence.
I hope this saves somebody some time.