Group Footer Moves to Next Page Even When Space Is Available

[jayeshsony]

I am facing an issue with JasperReports group footer layout behavior.

The group footer contains summary fields (e.g., Remaining Amount / Grand Total) enclosed inside a frame. Even when there is sufficient space available on the current page, the entire group footer is pushed to the next page.

Observed Behavior

The group footer always moves to a new page if the remaining space is slightly less than the total height of the footer.

This happens even when:

Remove Line When Blank is enabled

Fields inside the footer are conditionally hidden

The issue becomes more noticeable when a frame or rectangle is used inside the group footer.

Expected Behavior

The group footer should render on the same page if enough space is available.

Only the required visible fields should consume space.

Blank or unused areas should not force a page break.

Additional Notes

The issue occurs even when there is visible space remaining on the page.

The problem seems related to how JasperReports handles group footer height and frame rendering.

Replacing the frame with individual fields or moving content to the Summary band works, but that is not ideal for layout consistency.

sample_report.txt

sample.pdf

[teodord]

Hi,

It works like this by design and since we are talking about a very delicate part of the program, it is highly unlikely that this behavior will change any time soon, especially since there are a couple of reasonable workarounds.

The recommended workaround would be to isolate your group footer band content into a subreport template.
In the main report template group footer band, you could leave the main top frame and put the subreport inside it.
The subreport would receive all text field values as parameters and render them all in its title band, while making sure the subreport template has whenNoDataType="AllSectionsNoDetail", so that you do not need to provide it any data source or connection.

Another workaround would be to make all text elements and frames in the group footer very small in height, just like you did with the group footer band and its main frame. This would make it harder to design your report visually, but once done and you do not touch it very often, you can achieve what you need and move on.
As you can see, with the small band and frame you have, it is already difficult to design it because you are actually selecting and working with elements in the main frame that should not normally be visible in the small band/frame (it is a Jaspersoft Studio issue there).
So you are already half way through this inconvenience. And if you make all elements small, then you could actually make the main frame and band a little bigger, allowing you to design it a bit easier.

I hope this helps.
Teodor