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Multiplying 3 three labels across by 189 points yields 567 points, and subtracting that from the 612 point width of the paper leaves 45 points to be spread divided between the left and right margins, and taking 10 x 72, or 720 points from 792 leaves 72 points to be spread divided between the top and bottom margins. These measurements will be the first cut and may require some fine tuning later.
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Although intuitively we would just want to lay out 3 sets of name and address fields, there is no way that I know of to force the detail band to get 3 records at a time. This means we'll have to use sub-reports to represent the columns and somehow manipulate the data to print only what ought to be in the column the sub-report occupies.
Select the sub-report from the design pallet and drag one and only one sub-report to the detail band. We'll take care of the others later. The insert-sub-report dialog will ask whether you want to insert an inline or banded sub-report. Since we want the sub-reports to print side-by-side, we'll select inline. Go to Format->Size and Borders (the keyboard shortcut is Ctrl-1) and set width to 189 and height to 72 to match the size of the labels. While you're in the Format dialog you can also alter the font settings if you wish.
Double-click on the sub-report and it will take you to the sub-report design canvas. To make data available to the sub-report, Select Data->Data Sets->Inherited-Data-Factories, then traverse the tree to the query we defined earlier and right-click and acknowledge "select query".
Before we start dragging data to the canvas, let's define a function to put city, state, and postal code (zip) together in the USA format. Select Data->Add Function->Common->Open Formula and insert the formula:
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Now we can start to place data, so drag CUSTOMERNAME, ADDRESS1, and LASTLINE to the detail band. We want these fields to be the same size and aligned, so click on select all 3 of them by clicking on each while holding the shift key, select Style->(size & position), set their height to 14, their width to 185, and their x to 0.
Since we have 72 points of label height, and have 3 lines of size 14, we have 72-(3*14) or 30 points of space to use for margin, so let's set the y values at 15 for CUSTOMERNAME, 30 for ADDRESS1, and 45 for LASTLINE. Press the preview icon at the top left of the canvas and you can see that our label looks good, and that there are 10 labels printing per page. If you look closely, though, you'll see that every single record is printing in the first column, and we need this sub-report to print only the 1st, 4th, 7th and so on.
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If we know the position of the record in the result set, we can determine which column it belongs in by using the modulo function.
Some databases support returning a row number from a result set. For example MySQL does it this way:
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Unfortunately, this isn't a universal capability. We can use a report function to overcome thatcount records, so let's add a function, Running Count , Function and name it R0.
With this information, we're able to set a formula for the Details band Style->(size & position)-> visible that says =mod([R0];3)=1. That would be sufficient for the current report and column, but by defining some functions we make the filters more visible and easy-to-modify for later.
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If you'd like to add a logo or other embellishment to your sub-report, now would be a good time to do it.
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