So this is for Microsoft Office Infopath 2007 (SharePoint 2007).

The situation is that I started creating a SharePoint List (datasheet) and when I made my form dropdown read from the list, it just put elements in the order that I entered them in the datasheet.

Googling this led me to browse MSDN for an hour before I realised all those experts were using programming solutions that seemed a bit over the top for something that should be so simple.

Hey presto, I found a cheat/workaround:

1. Click on the list to see your datasheet (has a MS Access icon in the top left to remind you what you're getting yourself into)
2. Go to Settings
3. Select Create View
4. Select Datasheet View (you could probably use a "Standard View", I just used the Datasheet one)
5. Give the view a name, select what columns you want the form to have (I included the IDs for functional purposes)
6. Further down the "Create View" page, there should be a Sort section, specify the column to sort by.
7. Save the view by clicking the OK button.

You'll be returned to your datasheet and it's possible it isn't in any different order. I re-checked out my InfoPath form, looked at the dropdown that was already configured to read off the sharepoint list, and it had re-ordered to what I set in the view!!! I don't really understand how it works only that it does. I think this could get complicated if you had two dropdowns reading off the same list but needed to list elements in different orders.

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The situation is that we are replacing a website-application with a single SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS 2008 R2) report. We're using Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS VS2008) with Team Foundation Server (TFS VS2010) and connecting to an Oracle database (ie. "seamless integration because our setup is perfect and well thought through" not - note the DBMS is not hugely relevant for the purposes of this article).

The end-user must be able to search on EITHER the student's username or the student's ID (2 report parameters: @StudentADAccount [varchar] and @StudentReference [int] respectively). Most of the remaining datasets use the resulting @StudentReference number in their "where" clause. A student always has a "Student Reference" but not necessarily a student AD account (enquired/applied only).

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What?
This is an article intended for IT Support. It is a list of the system tools available in the Microsoft Windows OS that can be run from the "Start > Run" option.

How?

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Situation
The requirement in a lot of my reports in SSRS has always been a date range rather than just the one date. The user must be allowed to select all results between two dates instead of just specifying the one day. If the second parameter (ToDate) is the same as the first (FromDate), then the range is for that particular date.

Solution

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This must have been so obvious to everyone else that nobody bothered to write an article on it... till now.

Situation
I have a report that returns room bookings based on a user and given a date range. The problem is that there are a few thousand users and Microsoft's SQL Server Reporting Services interface isn't the most fun to scroll endlessly down. Advanced users can type the name really fast for it to auto-scroll down to the desired name. Our advanced users are exceptions to the rule.

Problem

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1. Open a Windows Explorer and make a duplicate of the report that you want to use as a template.
2. Rename the copy (suffix with template?)
3. Remove objects unique to the report and leave elements for all reports.
4. File > Save selected item as...
5. For SSRS 2008: Save in the folder: "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\PrivateAssemblies\ProjectItems\ReportProject"
6. Done!

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Update August 2011
So I don't know how many people were just saying why don't you do the following:

1. Bring up the "Tablix Properties" of the dataset
2. Look for the section "No Rows"
3. Put in a value for "NoRowsMessage".

This solution hides the entire Tablix which kinda defeats the purpose of having anything there. I want my end-users to have faith in my report. The report just returning blank can also mean "I don't know". I want the report to either return the correct value or say "No data found". My end-users would otherwise ask is the data value reliable if it's blank?

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The long way of doing this
I would have called this article "Iteration within SQL Server Reporting Services Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS) version 2008 through combining Transact-SQL and MDX expressions" but boy what a mouthful, and it's not really iterating anymore. So it's "SSRS Hide results table if empty" though I will add that if you wanted to put a message instead of hiding the table then following the below will also let you do this (requirements: common sense or the IQ of a duck).

It's what I've been searching for for the past hour and although you may think I'm just adding to the cyberspace pile of useless info, at least I'm not just copying and pasting from other sites to add content to my own. And I'm not just adding content, the way I'm doing the below is nothing similar to what I googled (probably a bad sign but time is ticking and no one has forever).

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Re: Business Intelligence Development Studio 2008

Often happens to me and not sure why. You open the project and the window panel for the Report Data containing the parameters and datasets isn't there. I spent a bit of time enabling/disabling toolbars before I found this.

1. Open a Report solution (or have one open already?)
2. The menu link is "report data" and it's right at the bottom of the "View" menu.

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This may sound silly to some but I've written a note because I spent time googling and still didn't find an answer.

My situation is that I wanted to put an expression to format the border (empty cells have a border and non-empty don't). This was so that a grid would show for empty spaces.

I wasn't getting very far because I'd even ask the border to be grey and save the project but when I come back to the setting, it's still black.

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Well I tried and I spent a few hours searching the net for a solution which displays the hours in the top columns, and undefined number of rooms in the rows. No all I was looking for was a calendar showing 1 day with the hours on the top. Working hours only as well...

Ok I admit I only googled for about 1 hour before I gave up and just wrote my own. Saying that it's taken me 4 hours just to do the below... hopefully it will be quicker next time now that I noted it all down.

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I thought I'd put something here as there are lots of posts like this on forums (a lot of which seem to be copied & pasted from other sites) but they refer to SQL Server 2000 or SQL Server 2005.

This is how to do it in SQL Server 2008 and creating a report in Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS) or MS Report Builder.

Scenario
I have a report that specifies some room bookings for a particular week. When I open the report, each drilldown row is collapsed (as opposed to expanded). The user can specify the date as it's a report parameter.

What we want
The user will select a date. We want the report to open with the specified day expanded and the remaining days that week to be collapsed (hidden). The first time I did this, I couldn't expand the remaining days so don't forget to tick the option "display can be toggled by this report item" like I did. ahem...

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Thought I'd put a note on how to remove the toolbar using the URL as I didn't find this clear on the net. Tried it and it didn't work. That's because I was using the Reporting Manager URL rather than the Reporting Server URL.

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