As an SSRS developer, one of the more frustrating things you may encounter is an expression error that is not descriptive or helpful. One problem I have is when an erroring expression is based on a calculation between two or more controls. This is especially true if I forgot to give my controls (usually textboxes) meaningful names! Here’s an example where I was lazy naming my controls:
Whoops! Which controls are these? What’s a quick way to find them on a busy report?
I highly recommend that you click View | Other Windows | Document Outline. When you do, every control in the report will appear in a tree-structured window on the left side by the Toolbox.
As you can see above, you can scroll through and click any report control. When you do, they become outlined in the report designer. Ah-ha! Here is textbox58!
You can even use the up/down cursor keys to change which control is selected in the Document Outline window. I haven’t seen much documentation about using this window but I find it incredibly helpful.
It’s best to rename the control first and then update the expression(s).
Hope you found this quick SSRS developer tip useful. Best wishes and happy SSRS developing!
