Add Controls to a Report

• Feb 09, 2026
• 4 minutes to read

Add Report Controls

To display a data field’s value in your report, drag the corresponding item from the Field List and drop it onto the report’s detail band. This creates a new report control bound to the corresponding field.

You can also use the Toolbox to add other controls to your report and display content such as text, images, charts, barcodes, and so on.

The Web Report Designer supports drag & drop operations from outside the browser window (making it easier to add content to your report documents):

• Image files - Drag & drop an image file onto the report surface to create a Picture Box.
• Text files - Drop a TXT file to create a label, or drop an RTF, DOCX, or HTML file to insert a Rich Text control with associated file content.
• PDF files - Drop a PDF file to insert a PDF Content control.
• Existing controls - Dropping a file onto an existing report control updates content with new file data.

This document describes how to add the most commonly used controls to a report. See Use Report Elements for a complete list of available controls.

Display Text

Use the following controls to display text in a report:

• Label

• Rich Text

• Table

• Character Comb

Double-click any of these controls to invoke an in-place editor where you can enter text.

Press CTRL+Enter to submit changes and close this mode.

You can use corresponding properties of the Appearance category to access the selected control’s font and alignment settings.

Labels and other text-oriented controls can display the following content:

• Static content

• Dynamic content

• Mixed content

Display Page Information

Use the Page Info control to display information about document pages, such as the current page number and/or total number of pages.

You can also use this control to add information about a report’s author and the document’s creation date.

See the following tutorials for detailed instructions:

• Add Page Numbers
• Display the User Name in a Report
• Display the Current Date and Time in a Report

Display Check Boxes, Images and Barcodes

Drop a Boolean data field from the Field List onto a report to create a Check Box control bound to that field.

Check boxes can display different states depending on the underlying data values.

Use the Picture Box control to display images in a report. You can load an image from an external file, from a bound data source, or from a web location using the specified URL.

To display barcodes, use the Barcode control.

Drawing Lines and Shapes

Use the Shape control to draw simple graphics in a report (circles, crosses or arrows).

The Line control enables you to draw straight or slanted lines in a single band.

The Cross-Band Line and Box controls enable you to draw lines and boxes spanning multiple report bands.