Question

The Problem

I am using dynamic matrix groups as in Dynamic Grouping from Chris Hays’s Reporting Services Sleazy Hacks Weblog (which has some great stuff and is worth checking out, by the way). I have my row and column groups bound to two multi-value parameters and everything is working great, except for one thing. Even though I am suppressing unused groups from displaying, they are still taking up space.

Here’s what the report looks like now when I choose only one row group and one column group:

Notice how even though the undesired groups have property hidden True (as set by an expression) they still take up space. Here’s what I’d like it to look like (I cut the blank areas out of the picture by hand):

The Question

Does anyone have any ideas how to make the blank areas shrink when the corresponding matrix groups are hidden?

Just For the Curious (Not part of the question)

For reference, here is what the matrix looks like in Layout mode:

And if anyone else wants to do dynamic matrix groups like this, here’s the code section that does the heavy lifting:

Public Function ValueIsInMultiParameter(MultiParameter As Parameter, Value As String) As Boolean
   Dim i as Long
   For i = 0 to MultiParameter.Count - 1
      If MultiParameter.Value(i) = Value Then Return True
   Next
   Return False
End Function

Public Function DynamicFieldValue(CurrentFields As Fields, MultiParameter As Parameter, Index As Long) As Object
   If ParameterCount(MultiParameter) - 1 < Index Then Return ""
   Return CurrentFields(MultiParameter.Value(Index)).Value
End Function

Public Function DynamicFieldFormattedValue(CurrentFields As Fields, MultiParameter As Parameter, Index As Long) As Object
   If ParameterCount(MultiParameter) - 1 < Index Then Return ""
   Return CustomFormat(CurrentFields(MultiParameter.Value(Index)).Value, MultiParameter.Value(Index))
End Function

Public Function DynamicGrouping(MultiParameter As Parameter, Index As Long) As Object
   If ParameterCount(MultiParameter) - 1 < Index Then Return "None"
   Return MultiParameter.Value(Index)
End Function

Public Function DynamicGroupingLabel(CurrentFields As Fields, MultiParameter As Parameter, Index As Long) As String
   If Index = 0 Then Return "Grand Total"
   If ParameterCount(MultiParameter) - 1 < Index Then Return ""
   Return CustomFormat(CurrentFields(MultiParameter.Value(Index - 1)).Value, MultiParameter.Value(Index - 1)) & " Total"
End Function

Public Function CustomFormat(Value As Object, ValueType As String) As String
   Select Case ValueType
      Case "DayOf"
         Return Format(Value, "M/d/yyyy")
      Case "WeekOf"
         Return Format(Value, "M/d/yyyy")
      Case "WeekDayPart"
         Return WeekdayName(Value)
      Case "MonthOf"
         Return Format(Value, "MMM yyyy")
      Case "MonthDayPart"
         Return "Day " & Value
      Case "MonthWeekPart"
         Return "Week " & Value
      Case "YearOf"
          Return Format(Value, "yyyy")
      Case "YearDayPart"
          Return "Day " & Value
      Case "YearWeekPart"
          Return "Week " & Value
      Case "YearMonthPart"
          Return MonthName(Value)
      Case "YearPart"
         Return Value
      Case Else
         Return Value
   End Select
End Function

Public Function ParameterCount(MultiParameter As Parameter) As Long
   If MultiParameter.Count = 0 OrElse MultiParameter.Value(0) = "1" Then Return 0
   Return MultiParameter.Count
End Function

In the parameters, I put a hard-coded list of selectable grouping options, for example the RowGroups parameter has available values:

Label   Value
-----   -------
Year    YearOf
Month   MonthOf
Week    WeekOf
Day     DayOf

Where the Value is the name of the SQL column as returned by the DataSet.

Answer 1

I haven’t found any way around this, but by conditionally setting the colour of the lower-grouped item to be the same as that of the higher-grouped item where there is no lower group selected, you could give the impression of one extra-wide higher-grouped item, instead of a normal-sized item next to a blank.

Incidentally, the linked blog doesn’t appear to have been updated since 2006.