title: fixed-width column format for SSRS report
body: <p>I have googled this and found nothing useful. The requirement is to produce a flat file in a format specified by position; e.g. field one is 30 characters, field 2 is 8 characters, so field 3 starts at column 39...</p>
  
  <p>In SSIS, this was trivial.</p>
  
  <p>I need a way for a user to go to the SSRS report server, run the report in a visual way (e.g. a table, also very easy to do), and then have an option to download into this required fixed width format.</p>
  
  <p>Can I create a custom download format that would basically be "no delimiters"?</p>
  
  <p>The data is selected in a way that each field is a fixed width columnn, i.e.</p>
  
  <pre><code>cast(ISNULL([13],'') as char(8)) as [13],
  cast(ISNULL([14],'') as char(8)) as [14],
  cast(ISNULL([15],'') as char(8)) as [15],
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Another option we have used is to concatenate into a single text column, i.e.</p>
  
  <pre><code>cast(ISNULL([13],'') as char(8)) +
  cast(ISNULL([14],'') as char(8)) +
  cast(ISNULL([15],'') as char(8)) as bigwidesinglefield
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>but that has not worked for export either.</p>
  
  <p>SSIS is generally the solution, but in this case, I need an on-demand file so an end user can perform a manual extract and then send the file to a regulatory reporting entity. I prefer not to just drop the output from SSIS on a file share somewhere because the data is confidential.</p>