Adding Text Boxes to a Report
Add a text box to a report when you want to display literal text for titles, descriptions, and labels, or dynamic text based on expressions. An expression can contain literal text, point to a field in the database, or calculate data. All expressions are shown as placeholder text so that you can format numbers, colors and other appearance properties. You can also combine placeholders with literal text in order to format text with multiple fonts, colors, styles, and actions. For more information, see Formatting Text and Importing HTML.
Every cell in a Tablix data region contains a text box, which can be formatted in the same way as stand-alone text boxes in a report. To show repeating text boxes in a free-form layout, arrange multiple text boxes in a List data region. Use a list when you want to repeat the form for multiple values, for example, a customer information sheet repeated once for each customer. Use a rectangle container when you want to control the text box layout and white space below the last text box. For more information, see Working with Data Regions.
Growing and Shrinking a Text Box
By default, text boxes are a static size. If you want to expand a text box vertically based on its contents, open the Text Box Properties dialog box and change the Allow height to increase option. If you want to allow the text box to shrink based on its contents, change the Allow height to decrease option for the text box. You can change the CanGrow or CanShrink properties in the Properties pane.