RecordArea
The RecordArea layout element allows adding record areas to your report.Use the RecordArea layout element to add text and data from a JSON document's fields dynamically at runtime to anywhere on a page, including a report's header, detail or footer sections.
Refer to designer-usersguide-examples for a GitHub example.
Add a RecordArea to your document by right-clicking and selecting Add Record Area from the context menu.
Figure 1. Adding a RecordArea layout element using the Add Record Area option in the context menu.
text Property
A RecordArea requires setting the text property to a text value. You can also add one or more data fields to a RecordArea.
Refer to Expressions for a list of available expressions in Designer.
Data Values
Add one or more data values to a RecordArea by specifying the name of the JSON field between #...# between regular text and it populates the value.
Figure 2. An example of adding a RecordArea to a report's footer.
If you need to display a # as a character, then escape it using two ##. For example, to display "Work Order #:" in the resultant PDF, you would use Work Order ##: as the text in the text property.
If your JSON dataset contains a field name with a dash or begins with a number, then you must surround the field name with square angle brackets. For example a field name of: field-one is written #[field-one]# in the text property's value.
Properties
| Property | Value | Description |
|---|---|---|
| align | center, fullJustify, justify, left, right | RecordArea content alignment. |
| autoLeading | true,false | Value indicating if RecordArea should be leading automatically. |
| cleanParagraphBreaks | true,false | Value indicating if RecordArea should have clean paragraph breaks. |
| font | See Fonts Users Guide topic.. | Value indicating the RecordArea text content font. |
| fontSize | numeric | Value indicating the RecordArea text size. |
| leading | numeric | Value indicating the RecordArea text leading. If set, then the autoLeading property value must be false. |
| paragraphIndent | numeric | Number of spaces to indent paragraph text in a RecordArea. |
| paragraphSpacing | numeric | Spacing between paragraphs. |
| text | text | A value indicating the text of the RecordArea. |
| textColor | See Colors Users Guide topic. | Color of text in RecordArea. |
| underline | true,false | Value specifying if text in RecordArea is underlined. |
| vAlign | bottom, center, top | A value indicating the vertical alignment. |
| id | text | A value indicating the programmatic identifier of the RecordArea. |
| angle | numeric | The number of degrees to rotate the RecordArea. |
| expandable | true, false | A value indicating whether the RecordArea is expandable. |
| height | numeric | The height of RecordArea. |
| splittable | true, false | A value indicating if the RecordArea can be split between pages. |
| width | numeric | A value indicating the RecordArea width. |
| x | numeric | The x coordinate of the RecordArea. |
| y | numeric | the y coordinate of the RecordArea. |
- The cleanParagraphBreaks property being set to
trueonly affects the RecordArea if the splittable property is also set totrue. - To allow a field to expand based on amount of data, set the
expandableproperty to true.
Number Formatting
The RecordArea supports using formatting for data fields containing data such as currency and numbers.
| Code | Description | Example |
|---|---|---|
| # | Formatter rounds to a number but does not pad with zeros. | #.## |
| 0 | Formatter rounds decimals to a number of zeros. If length is less than numbers, then pad with zeros. | 00.00 |
| . | Decimal place. | ###.0# |
| , | Indicates thousand separator. | #,###,## |
| e | Convert number into scientific (exponential) format. | ##,####.##e |
| a | Recalculates very big and very small numbers by reducing length and adding a suffix/prefix. | #.0000a |
| b | Recalculate to kilobytes, megabytes, etc. and add corresponding suffix. | |
| s | Display an absolute number. | #.0s |
| ‘ | Encloses text without parsing; includes formatted output as is. |
Date/Time Formatting
The RecordArea supports using formatting for data fields containing dates.
| Code | Description |
|---|---|
| yyyy | Four digit year. |
| yy | Two digit year. |
| MM | Two digit month. |
| MMM | Abbreviated month name. |
| MMMM | Full month name. |
| dd | Two digit day. |
| ddd | Abbreviated day name. |
| dddd | Full day name. |
| HH | 24-hour format. |
| hh | 12-hour format. |
| mm | Minute. |
| ss | Second. |
| fff | Three-digit millisecond. |
| tt or a | AM/PM designator. |
Examples of Custom Date/Time Format Strings
yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss:2025-09-09 14:17:00MM/dd/yyyy hh:mm tt:09/09/2025 02:17 PMdddd, MMMM dd, yyyy:Tuesday, September 09, 2025h:mm:ss tt:2:17:00 PM
Refer to Overview: How to format numbers, dates, enums, and other types in .NET for more formatting options.