Is there any way to fill horizontally a dynamically sized band?

[twoods]

I have master report A, that includes sub-report B. Sub-report B has multiple columns and includes sub-report C in B's detail band. There are a variable number of records in all 3 reports. I want to fill sub-report B's columns horizontally, but when I do that it often produces the error "subreport overflowed on a band that does not support overflow." If I set sub-report B's height to a fixed size large enough to hold the maximum height of any potential record produced by sub-report C, then it works horizontally but wastes a lot of space for any records that don't produce tall sub-report Cs. Interestingly in the cases where horizontal fill works, it will stretch sub-report B's detail band so long as it fits at least one row of sub-report C; this doesn't make sense to me that it will do this but otherwise seems to require a minimum height as I described. Alternatively if I set sub-report B to fill vertically it works, but that ends up wasting a lot of space in the right margin. I would much prefer to fill horizontally in this case.

Is there any way to fill horizontally with a component that has dynamic height and stretch the enclosing band accordingly?

I have tried with Lists as well and experience similar problems. The only solution I see right now is to programatically estimate the page height for sub-report B by pre-analyzing my data (yuk).