After you publish a report to a report server, you can view and print the report from a browser, Report Manager, or any application that you use to view an exported report. Before publishing a report, you can print it when you preview it.

All print processing is performed on demand and on the client computer. There is no server-side print functionality that enables you to route a print job directly from a report server to a printer that is attached to the Web server. Printers and print options are selected by individual report users using a standard Print dialog box.

Note:

Although users cannot specify a printer as a target delivery destination in a subscription, SQL Server Reporting Services includes a sample Printer Delivery extension that shows developers how to author a delivery extension that provides this functionality. By creating a custom delivery extension, a developer can provide subscription users with the ability to route a report directly to a printer on a scheduled basis, without user intervention required. For more information, see Readme_Printer Delivery Extension Sample and Delivery Extensions Overview.

Report authors who design reports specifically for print output can use page breaks, report headers and footers, expressions, and background images to create a print-based design. Examples of report design elements intended for print output might include terms and conditions that you print on the back of every report, or graphic and text elements that mimic letterhead.

Due to the way pagination is implemented for different rendering formats, you may not be able to achieve optimum print output results for every report in every rendering format. Report pages are designed to accommodate variable amounts of data. Reports that include a matrix, for example, can cause a page to grow both horizontally and vertically depending on whether a user expands the rows and columns. A user who does not expand a matrix will get different print results than a user who does.

Reporting Services does not provide a way to combine landscape and portrait mode pages in the same report, nor does it provide a way to create a print-based layout that replaces or exists alongside the layout of a report as rendered in a browser or other application. For most exported reports, report printouts include everything that is visible on the report, as viewed by the user on a computer monitor.

If you are a developer, you can configure and use the RSClientPrint ActiveX control in custom applications. For more information, see Using the RSClientPrint Control in Custom Applications and Enabling and Disabling Client-Side Printing for Reporting Services.

Note:
HTML report printouts may contain only the content on the first page if you are using the browser's Print command. You can achieve better results if you print HTML reports using the Reporting Services client printing functionality. For more information, see Printing Reports from a Browser Using the Print Control.