Using Alternating Row Colors for SSRS

Outside of the making sure that reports reflect the accuracy of the data, it’s also important to make sure the reports are easy to read. One of the most effective ways to make reports easy to ready is to ensure that the visibility of data aligns with the natural way people read data – left to right and top to bottom.

Using alternating row colors not only can make the report more visually pleasing, but also simply easier to read. There are several ways to accomplish this but the most methods would working using to common SSRS expressions: RunningValue and RowNumber. RowNumber is a bit simpler and requires less values but RunningValue is more reliable.

You can use RowNumber when you are using a simply Tablix (Table) where there is no Tablix Grouping defined. Tables are a popular method for displaying data. When you have rows with many columns (8 or more) you can make the tables easier to read by adding alternating color to the rows. Even without a lot of columns, alternative row colors can still make an impactful look on columns. For example, when we look at the following column…

This example using a column where there is no grouping. Therefore, we could simply using a RowNumber SSRS Expression. This requires specifying the textbox background using the following expression to generate alternative row colors… =iif(ROWNUMBER(nothing) MOD 2,"White","Gainsboro").

Again, this method works great when we are using a Tablix that does not use group or aggregations. When using grouping, I suggest you instead try RunningValue to accomplish alternating row colors because the row number are not often sequential when using grouping. In this case I have grouped the items by Conference and then allow drill down to the Institution category.

I would suggest then using RunningValue as the method to establish the alternative columns. You would then use the following method instead

=IIF(RunningValue(Fields!Resource_No_Name.Value,CountDistinct,Nothing) Mod 2,"Silver ", "White")

Whatever type of Tablix configuration that is being used, either RunningValue or RowNumber should be part of the SSRS expression use setting alternate row colors.