>Bill,
>
>>When I use the SUMMARY option, it still prints a 1 point blank line, in the space where the detail band would be, for every record in the data source.
>>I don't remember why I used an external flag for printing the detail band, but I don't think that should make any difference to my problem.
>
>Well it's not the exact same thing. Try creating a new report, just make it a Quick report using the column layout format. create a report variable to sum one of the numeric columns, put a field in the report footer to output the report variable. Then run REPORT ... SUMMARY and see if it has the problem.

Thanks.
You made me think of removing all the items in the detail band and putting them back in one at a time. Turned out I had a vertical line spanning the height of the band (I thought). It was 3 points short of the height of the band, so the "remove line when blank" wasn't covering the entire band for that item.