Yes, I know how to place fields on the layout. My question was related to building an expression that can accomodate whether or not data is present, collapsing or expanding based on data being present. The latest version of iReports informed me that valid escape characters included the "\t", but since it does not work, it is either a bug, incorrect documentation, or I am simply not using it correctly. Anyway, here is what I am trying to do. Suppose I place the following fields on my detail band. COMMTYPE1 COMM1 COMMTYPE2 COMM2 COMMTYPE3 COMM3 Assume now, if COMMTYPE2 and COMM2 are blank, COMMTYPE1, COMMTYPE3, COMM1 and COMM3 contain values. I do not want COMMTYPE2 or COMM2 to take up space in the detail band, so what should print is: COMMTYPE1 COMM1 COMMTYPE3 COMM3 The question now becomes (since I can not build an expression that checks for blanks and uses "\t" to indent and "\n" to start on a new line) is there a way for fields placed on a layout (COMMTYPE3 and COMM3 in this example), to slide up, based on the object(s) above? I don't see how to accomplish this in iReports, unless one has to create a subreport.