How are Shipping Labels distinguishing odd/even records?

The report is in Customer Shipment Entry, in the Print dialog (Print Packing Slip / Labels) with only “Shipping Labels” selected, using report style “Standard - SSRS”.

I’m looking at the SSRS report in Report Builder, and it shows two separate labels on the page. It appears that the odd numbered lines are printed using the left label and the even numbered lines are printed using the right label. But how does it know to partition them this way? When I look at the properties of the Tablixes, Rectangles, and Fields, under Visibility the “Hidden” flag is always “False”, whereas I would have expected some expression setting the visibility based on whether the record was odd or even. The individual fields for both sides are identical; for instance, for the manufacturer part number it’s “=Fields!PartNum.Value” for both records. When I look at the dataset properties, I only see (e.g.) PartNum defined once.

I created a copy of the report and removed the right tablix. Now it still only prints odd numbered lines, so it still somehow thinks it’s divided into even/odd, but I can’t see anywhere it’s set to do this. I looked in the RDD and I don’t see any duplication there either. How is it doing this?

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The first row of the left side tablix has a visibility expression
That (RowNumber(Nothing) Mod 2 = 0) makes it hidden for even rows

All other rows in the tablix are similar. The right hand tablix has the same visibility expressions with <> 0 in place of the = 0.

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How do I get that orange bar to show up? I’ve tried clicking every which way I can think of, but I either get the tablix to show up with an outline:


Or I wind up selecting a rectangle, which also doesn’t have anything hidden:

Get the screen to look like it does in your second picture. Then right click in the row selector on the left (where the red rectangle is in my picture)

Thanks! I had to click around a bit but managed to get it back to that state.

Visibility: hidden is false there also for both rows:


When you click exactly where the cursor is in the following, it selects the rectangle - which is in a row in a tablix

Now move the cursor to the row selector shown below, and right click to get the popup menu:

Now you can select the Row Visibility.

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Oh hey, that did it, thanks! (whew)