Not All Hyperlinks are Born Equal

The ASP.NET ReportViewer control has a HyperlinkTarget property which may give false expectations. You may believe that this property applies to all hyperlinks, including links to drillthrough reports. For example, you may attempt to set the HyperlinkTarget to _blank to open a drillthrough report in a new window. However, you will be disappointed to find that drillthrough reports ignore the HyperlinkTarget property completely. That’s because they require a page postback.

As it stands, the HyperlinkTarget property applies only to “regular” (Jump to URL) hyperlinks. Propagating HyperlinkTarget to drillthrough links is on the wish list for a next release. Meanwhile, if you need to open a drillthrough report in a new window, consider using a Jump To URL link that points to an ASP.NET page hosting the ReportViewer control (or reuse the same one that displays the master report). The ASP.NET page would parse the link and load the drillthrough report in the ReportViewer control. If you set the HyperlinkTarget property to _blank, the drillthrough report will open in a new window because it now launched from a regular link.