The value provided for the report parameter is not valid for its type

August 26, 2009 in Reporting Services | 11 comments

While building parameterized reports in SQL Server Reporting Services 2005 you may come across the following error when viewing the report in Preview.

An error occurred during local report processing.

The value provided for the report parameter ‘YourParameter’ is not valid for its type.

I encountered this error even though I had not specified a default value for the parameter. So how can it be not valid if it doesn’t exist?

I found a perfect solution in this little article.

Apparently it has something to do with the Allow blank value checkbox. In my report the data type for my parameter was Integer. And as explained in the mentioned article, the Allow blank value checkbox is checked and greyed out. Luckily the little trick of switching to String, unchecking the checkbox and switching back to Integer solves the error.

But why? How come that an error occurs due to a setting that is greyed out? A greyed out setting, doesn’t that mean that its value is not applicable in combination with the other settings? Apparently not. Well, I guess that’s a bug then, right?

If someone has a good explanation on this behaviour don’t hesitate to post a comment!

Tags: bug, Reporting Services, SSRS

11 comments

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Peter on February 26, 2010 at 9:35 PM

Wow…all this time recreating datasets and it was a bug…thanks for the info!

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Horia on June 29, 2010 at 6:39 PM

is it just me or this is being extremely silly ? good thing some1 posted this .. cheers

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Hans on December 17, 2010 at 7:47 AM

Thanks for sharing this, blog based solutions to an issue are making me happy You get 2 at once, first the solution to the issue, mostly with some side info, and second you get to know a nice blog.

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1. Valentino Vranken on December 17, 2010 at 12:37 PM
  
  Thank you for that nice comment Hans! When you’re struggling with a certain problem, it certainly helps when someone has written a blog post about it and it’s even better when the post actually mentions a solution (which is not always the case). I guess that’s the reason why I started blogging in the first place
  
  As a blogger, I have to say that I also get more satisfaction writing posts that offer a solution, or real articles with a certain purpose in mind, as opposed to the announcement-style posts. It’s the first category that attracts the most readers and comments.
  
  Best regards,
  Valentino.
  
  Reply
Rodney on January 12, 2011 at 5:54 PM

Thanks for this. Just like Peter I spent quite some time recreating datasets, changing queries, changing parameter types to no avail. This has got to one of the most annoying bugs, because it seems like it would be so simple to fix. Oh well, thanks for the blog entry.

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Patrick on January 19, 2011 at 4:13 PM

Thank you for posting this! I was pulling my hair out trying to figure this out.

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1. Cindy on March 9, 2011 at 9:32 PM
  
  Thanks from me also. This was one of several annoyances for the day, I would have wasted a lot more time trying to figure this one out had it not been for your post. It is much appreciated.
  
  Reply
Christian U on May 9, 2011 at 11:19 PM

Very helpful tip. Thank you.
I migrated rdls from a previous version to RS 2005 rdls, and it seems that option appeared out of nothing

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Parisa on May 31, 2011 at 1:08 AM

thanks a lot.it helps me

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Vasilis T on June 16, 2011 at 9:54 AM

Thank the lord! You saved me from a big headache….
Very strange behaviour. I wouldn’t have figured it out for ages if you hadn’t told me.

Many thanks!

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1. Nanda on August 16, 2011 at 6:51 PM
  
  Thanks a lot.. it helps me
  
  Reply