Table of Contents

Question

 

Hi All,

 

I have a table of contents where i need to show different sections of a report with the page numbers.. However, before the section starts, there is a free text area which can take 1-3 pages (not fixed). Is there any way to dynamically determine the page numbers for the sections.. may be by using something like a bookmark.. but am not quite sure if something like this exists.

 

Cheers.

Answer 1

Hi,

You can rest the page number on group breaks.

Resetting the page number on group breaks isn't natively supported, but it can be achieved by tracking group breaks in a shared variable and subtracting off the page offset of the first page of the group from the current page number.

Step 1:  Make sure there's a textbox in the report which contains the group expression

Step 2:  Add shared variables to track the current group and page offset
 Shared offset as Integer
 Shared currentgroup as Object

Step 3:  Add a custom function to set the shared variables and retrieve the group page number
 Public Function GetGroupPageNumber(group as Object, pagenumber as Integer) as Object
  If Not (group = currentgroup)
   offset = pagenumber - 1
   currentgroup = group
  End If
  Return pagenumber - offset
 End Function

Step 4: Use the function in the page header or footer
 =Code.GetGroupPageNumber(ReportItems!Category.Value,Globals!PageNumber)

Note:  Because this uses static variables, if two people run the report at the exact same moment, there's a slim chance one will smash the other's variable state  (In SQL 2000, this could occasionally happen due to two users paginating through the same report at the same time, not just due to exactly simultaneous executions)  If you need to be 100% certain to avoid this, you can make each of the shared variables a hash table based on user ID (Globals!UserID).

 

Answer 2

Can you give an example of how to make the shared variables a hash table based on user ID ?