1. Create a new Visual Studio project.
2. From the Project menu, select Add New Item.
3. In the Add New Item dialog that appears, select ActiveReports 9 Section Report (code-based) and in the Name field, rename the file as rptLabels.
4. Click the Add button to open a new section report in the designer.

See Adding an ActiveReport to a Project for information on adding different report layouts.

1. On the detail section band, click the Data Source Icon.
   
2. In the Report Data Source dialog that appears, on the OLE DB tab, next to Connection String, click the Build button.
3. In the Data Link Properties window that appears, select Microsoft Jet 4.0 OLE DB Provider and click the Next button to move to the Connection tab.
4. Click the ellipsis (...) button to browse to your database, for example the NWind.mdb sample database. Click Open once you have selected the appropriate database path.
5. Click the Test Connection button to see if you have successfully connected to the database.
6. Click OK to close the Data Link Properties window and return to the Report Data Source dialog. Notice that the Connection String field gets filled automatically.
7. In the Query field on the OLE DB tab, enter the following SQL query.

   SQL Query	Copy Code
   SELECT ContactName, CompanyName, Address, City, PostalCode, Country FROM Customers

8. Click OK to save the data source and return to the report design surface.

1. Right-click the PageHeader section and select Delete to remove the PageHeader and Footer sections from the report.
2. In the Report menu, select Settings and change the margins as follows:
   • Top margin: 0.5
   • Bottom margin: 0.5
   • Left margin: 0.2
   • Right margin: 0.2
3. In the Report Explorer, select Report and in the Properties Window, set the PrintWidth property to 8.1 (the width of the label sheet less the Left and Right margins).
4. Click the detail section of the report to select it and in the Properties window, set the properties as follows.

   Property Name	Property Value
   CanGrow	False
   ColumnCount	3
   ColumnDirection	AcrossDown
   ColumnSpacing	0.2
   Height	1

5. From the toolbox, drag six TextBox controls onto the detail section and set the properties of each textbox as follows.

   TextBox1

   Property Name	Property Value
   DataField	ContactName
   Location	0, 0 in
   Size	2.5, 0.2 in
   Font Bold	True

   TextBox2

   Property Name	Property Value
   DataField	CompanyName
   Location	0, 0.2 in
   Size	2.5, 0.2 in

   TextBox3

   Property Name	Property Value
   DataField	Address
   Location	0, 0.4 in
   Size	2.5, 0.2 in

   TextBox4

   Property Name	Property Value
   DataField	City
   Location	0, 0.6 in
   Size	2.5, 0.2 in

   TextBox5

   Property Name	Property Value
   DataField	PostalCode
   Location	0, 0.8 in
   Size	1.45, 0.2 in

   TextBox6

   Property Name	Property Value
   DataField	Country
   Location	1.5, 0.8 in
   Size	1, 0.2 in

6. Select all of the textboxes, and in the Properties Window, set the CanGrow property to False. This prevents overlapping text, but may crop data if one of the fields contains more data than the control size allows.

If you preview the report at this point, one copy of each label appears on the page.

1. Double-click in the detail section to create a detail_Format event.
2. Add the following code to the event to repeat each label across all three columns.  

To write the code in Visual Basic.NET

'print each label three times
Static counter As Integer
counter = counter + 1
If counter <= 2 Then
    Me.LayoutAction = GrapeCity.ActiveReports.LayoutAction.MoveLayout Or GrapeCity.ActiveReports.LayoutAction.PrintSection
Else
    Me.LayoutAction = GrapeCity.ActiveReports.LayoutAction.MoveLayout Or GrapeCity.ActiveReports.LayoutAction.NextRecord Or GrapeCity.ActiveReports.LayoutAction.PrintSection
    counter = 0
End If

To write the code in C#

int counter=0; 

//print each label three times
counter = counter + 1; 
if (counter <= 2) 
{ 
    this.LayoutAction =  GrapeCity.ActiveReports.LayoutAction.MoveLayout|GrapeCity.ActiveReports.LayoutAction.PrintSection; 
} 
else 
{ 
    this.LayoutAction = GrapeCity.ActiveReports.LayoutAction.MoveLayout|GrapeCity.ActiveReports.LayoutAction.NextRecord|GrapeCity.ActiveReports.LayoutAction.PrintSection; 
    counter = 0; 
}

• Click the preview tab to view the report at design time.

OR

• Open the report in the Viewer. See Using the Viewer for further information.