
Using Report Wizard
Building reports in BIDS manually — that is, without using the Report Wizard — gives you
the ability to customize every property. This lets you control the appearance of the report
down to the tiniest detail. Of course you may not need this level of control. If your manager
wants a quick report and does not want to worry about the specifics of its appearance, the
Report Wizard is the tool to use.
The Report Wizard is a walkthrough tool that asks several questions and automatically creates
a report based on your answers. It does not enable you to make adjustments during the pro-
cess. After you run the Report Wizard you can adjust the report, so the wizard can be used as
a launching pad for your report, and you can finish the fine-tuning in BIDS manually.
The wizard can be launched in two ways.
If you are starting a new report project, launch the wizard by clicking File New Project
and select Report Server Project Wizard.
If you already have a report project open, launch the wizard by right-clicking the Report
folder in the Solution Explorer window and selecting Add New Report.
The first screen you see in the wizard is a welcome screen. (This screen offers you the option
to hide it in the future.) The next screen is where you select the data source for your report.
If you have a shared data source on your project, you will be able to select it from the Shared ...