The purpose of this article is to help answer a common question we receive regarding print alignment when printing to pre-formatted print stock like a 1099-MISC tax form. The 1099-MISC tax form will be the focus of this particular blog but the instructions can be applied to most any SSRS report generated through Dynamics AX 2012.
We will be formatting SSRS report output to align to the 1099-MISC form below. This 1099-MISC form is commonly available through several office supply outlets..png)
While we strive to accurately render the results of this report to align to the form, there are variables that come into play that may cause the alignment to drift when rendered through your print environment. This is generally caused by variations in printer hardware, software, drivers, and print stock between batches and manufacturers. To overcome this, you may need to manually adjust the report to render correctly within your particular printing environment.
1. Open Visual Studio
2. Navigate to View > Application explorer to open the Application Explorer (pane)
3. In the Application Explorer (pane), Navigate to SSRS > Reports > Tax1099Report
4. Right-click on Tax1099Report and select the Edit option to open the Tax1099Report
6. Navigate to the Tax1099Report > Designs > Tax1099MISC
7. Right click on Tax1099MISC and select the Edit Using Designer option
8. Note in the Properties (pane), the selected object is Report. These are the properties for the overall report layout.
9. Select the text box “[CompanyName]’.
10. Note the Properties (pane) focus changed to the selected text object which in this case is Textbox2. These are the properties that are specific to Textbox2. The next two screen shots are meant to show the fill list of properties for this particular object
11. For the purposes of this tutorial, we will only be concerned with the following properties.
a. Position > Location > Left
b. Position > Location > Top
c. Position > Size > Width
d. Position > Size > Height
12. to make changes to the location, you can either use the arrow keys on the keyboard or make manual changes in the Left and Top (fields)
a. Arrow key = full nudge
b. Ctrl + Arrow key = micro nudge
13. to make changes to the size, you can either use the Shift + arrow key or make manual changes in the Width and Height (fields)
a. Shift + Up arrow key = full vertical shrink
b. Ctrl + Shift + Up Arrow key = micro vertical shrink
c. Shift + Down arrow key = full vertical grow
d. Ctrl + Shift + Down Arrow key = micro vertical grow
e. Shift + Left arrow key = full horizontal shrink
f. Ctrl + Shift + Left Arrow key = micro horizontal shrink
g. Shift + Right arrow key = full horizontal grow
h. Ctrl + Shift + Right Arrow key = micro horizontal grow
14. Once you are happy with your layout changes, click Ctrl + S to save the changes you have made to the report
15. Navigate to View > Solution explorer to open the Solution Explorer (pane)
16. In the Solution Explorer (pane), right click on ReportModel1 and select the Deploy option to deploy the updated report to your report server.
17. Wait for the output to complete the deployment process. when complete you should see the message “Deploy 1 succeeded, 0 failed, 0 skipped”
18. Here is what our Tax1099MISC report looked like before making adjustments.
19. Here is how our Tax1099MISC report looks after making adjustments.
John Bengson [MSFT]
John,
Thanks for some great tips. I am a novice using this reporting software. I manage to get the top half of the form lined up. However, I've been trying to get the next record to print out on the bottom half of the form and after a couple of days trying I finally gave up. Is there a way to populate the entire form????
Thx,
Ben
Ben, Thank you for your inquiry. In order to get the report to print in it's entirety on one page, you will need to adjust both the text box positions as well as the report header, footer, and space between the top half and the bottom half of the report. unfortunately you may need to run through several design changes before you receive the results you are expecting. If you still need assistance on this, I recommend opening a support request where we can advise you on what additional adjustments you may require for your specific environment.
John Bengson [MSFT]
Hi John,
I do have a similar requirement, to print data onto SF1034 and SF1035(Public voucher forms of US govt). Unlike the above report, it has transactions to be printed too. How would you suggest that I solve this issue?
Thanks,
Sumit
John, I'm trying to do something similar using the gov. DD1149 property transfer form. How does your tax form suddenly appear with the textboxes in all the right places? In my case, I cropped the DD1149 and put the correctly sized images into the header and footer, but am unable to place textboxes with table fields on the image and get them aligned properly. Any suggestions, I'm getting a little frustrated and can't seem to find much about this on the internet.
Thanks, Bob
John,
I have a similar situation working with a gov. DD1149 property transfer form. I cropped the image (bmp file) and placed the upper part in the header and lower part in the footer. I placed a textbox with the appropriate field(s) on the image. However, I can't get the textbox to display in the correct block on the image. Any suggestions?
P.S. How did you get all your textboxes to show in the perfect position on your tax form?
Thanks, Bob
Really Thankful to you for such a great job, thanks
Thank you for this, but I don't know why we have to adjust this report as it's a standard govt issue form.
Hi John,
Your article is really what I want to adjust the Tax 1099 form in AX 2012. However I get lost because I cannot find a way to navigate to "the Application Explorer (pane), Navigate to SSRS > Reports > Tax1099Report" after open my Visual Studio 2013: I don't see "Application Explorer".
Please help!
Thanks
Ed
Sunmit,
Thank you for your inquiry, I don’t believe AX natively supports the Standard Form 1034 (SF1034) so I presume you’re attempting to implement it as a customization and encountering a roadblock with how to enable transactional text (Articles or Service) to be listed out on the report. I think your inquiry falls slightly outside the scope of this blog which is to help with general alignment issues. That being said, I would presume this could be achieved by looking at some of the other reports in AX that render transactional data and mirroring how that is achieved. If you still require assistance beyond that, I recommend reaching out to support to open an advisory case.
Bob,
Thank you for your inquiry. It took several trial and error attempts of me shifting boxes around on the report in Visual Studio, saving those change, deploying those changes to the report server, and then rendering them in AX until I finally managed to get them to all show up on the form like I expected. The only difference is that I have to do this on screen vs on paper for the purpose of visually representing the changes made for this blog.
Jaynet,
Thank you for the kind words.
Sarah,
Your welcome. I believe I touched base on the purpose for these modifications in the beginning of the blog before I dove into the step by step instructions.
Edward,
Thank you for your inquiry, I think you need to install the development tools from the AX installation disc to enable the plugin that allows you to use the application explorer.
HI John,
Thanks for the post. Do you know of a way to adjust the alignment in code? For example if we knew how far to move a field could we enter that data in a print dialog before running the report?
Kind regards, Evan
John,
This is a great tip.
My issue is Vendor Address may contain more than two lines. I assume I can copy/paste and align new text box but I would assume some coding class would have to be modified also. I have little experience in coding. Any guidance you can provide would be appreciated. Thanks, Ricard