Paul Turley excerpts a chapter from his new Reporting Services book:
With respect to page layout, reports have two sizing modes: interactive and printable. When users run a report in their web browser and use it interactively, they typically don’t care that much about the page size. This is particularly true with reports that have wide content like a matrix region that can dynamically grow horizontally with the data. When a report is printed or rendered to a print- able format like a PDF or Word file, we need to be mindful about fitting the content on pages.
The report designer does not make page sizing and dimensions particularly obvious so it’s an easy thing to miss. Fortunately, the science behind page sizing is pretty simple. Page dimension properties are grouped into two objects that you can select in the designer; these are shown in Figure 7-1. With the Properties window visible, click outside the report body to show properties for the report. Here you will see the InteractiveSize and PageSize properties. Expand these to see the individual Width and Height properties for each group.
Read on to get the better part of a full chapter’s worth of material.