About paper sizes

The application uses many different paper sizes when printing or generating report outputs. These paper sizes can be one of these basic types:

  • Standard sizes - These sizes are based on national (U.S.) or international (ISO) standards. In forms that allow you to select paper sizes, these sizes are predefined in the system and cannot be modified.
    Note: There is one "standard size" that is actually not based on a predefined standard size. The DATAVIEWLAYOUT paper size is not a preset definition, but rather is calculated at the time it is used, based on the number and size of the columns in the DataView. Its purpose is to create report "paper sizes" that can accommodate DataView reports, which are often much too large to fit on standard paper sizes. These reports are not typically suitable for print output and are intended primarily for Excel or PDF.
  • Custom sizes - These are sizes that you or other users can define for special purposes, such as packaging labels, identification tags, or oversized sheets. You can define these sizes using the Report Paper Sizes form.

    Once a custom paper size has been defined, its name displays on the list of paper sizes wherever they are displayed. This makes them selectable, the same as any other paper size.

How the application determines the paper size to use for a report

There are three different locations where paper size selections can be made for report outputs. In order of priority, these are the locations:

  • When preparing a report for print output, the application first checks to see if the paper size is defined on the Report Options form.
  • If it is not, the application next checks the Background Task Definitions form.
  • If no paper size is selected there, then the Report paper size process default is used.

Paper sizes in SSRS reports

In SSRS reports, the paper size is defined in the SSRS report template, and not by the list of system paper sizes. The paper size in these reports applies only to printed reports. Although the system tries to retrieve and use the paper size setting for an SSRS report from the official list of paper sizes (from the Report Paper Sizes form), changing the size of the report in the RDL file remains the recommended technique for changing the size of an SSRS report.