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ActiveReports are based on banded sections. By default, an ActiveReport has three sections: a PageHeader, a Detail section, and a PageFooter. You can right-click on the report and select Insert, then select the type of section pair you would like to add: ReportHeader and Footer, or GroupHeader and Footer. Except for the Detail section, sections always come in pairs.

A report section contains a group of controls that are processed and printed at the same time as a single unit. All sections except the detail section come in pairs, above and below the detail section. You can hide any section that you are not using by setting the Visible property of the section to False. ActiveReports defines the following section types:

Report Header

A report can have one report header section that prints at the beginning of the report. This section generally is used to print a report title, a summary table, a chart or any information that only needs to appear once at the report's start. This section has a NewPage property that you can use to cause the report to break to a new page after it renders.

Page Header

A report can have one page header section that prints at the top of each page. Unless the page contains a report header section, the page header is the first section that prints on the page. The page header section is used to print column headers, page numbers, a page title, or any information that needs to appear at the top of each page in the report.

GroupHeader

A report can consist of single or nested groups, with each group having its own header and footer sections. The header section is inserted and printed immediately before the detail section. For more information on grouping, see Grouping Data.

The GroupHeader section is the only section type on which you can drop the new CrossSectionBox and CrossSectionLine controls, which then span any intervening sections to the corresponding GroupFooter section.

For Columnar Reports, you can have the GroupHeader section follow the ColumnLayout or not, use ColumnGroupKeepTogether, and select whether to start a NewColumn before or after a group.

You can also specify whether to print a NewPage before or after the section, and have the section print on every page until the group details complete with the RepeatStyle property. The UnderlayNext property allows you to show group header information inside the group details, so long as you keep the BackColor property of the Detail section set to Transparent.

Detail

A report has one detail section. The detail section is the body of the report and one instance of the section is created for each record in the report. You can set the CanShrink property to True to eliminate white space after controls, and you can set up Columnar Reports using ColumnCount, ColumnDirection, ColumnSpacing and NewColumn properties.

The KeepTogether property attempts to keep the section together on a single page, and the new RepeatToFill property allows you to fill each page with the same number of formatted rows, regardless of whether there is enough data to fill them. This is especially useful for reports such as invoices in which you want consistent formatting like lines or green bars or back colors to fill each page down to the Footer section at the bottom.

GroupFooter

A report can consist of single or nested groups, with each group having its own header and footer sections. The header section is inserted and printed immediately before the detail section. The footer section is inserted and printed immediately after the detail section.

Page Footer

A report can have one page footer section that prints at the bottom of each page. It is used to print page totals, page numbers, or any other information that needs to appear at the bottom of each page.

Report Footer

A report can have one report footer section that prints at the end of the report. Use this section to print a summary of the report, grand totals, or any information that needs to print once at the report's end.