Crystal Reports and VS2010

1
votes

We have Crystal Reports running and it is tied into our VS2010 installation. I have not looked at the instance in a long time because we had a devoted Crystal developer on board, however he is gone now and I need to make a few changes. When I try to open up the .rpt file in VS2010 all I get is garbage, not the Crystal Report with the GUI. What do I need to configure/install to get to see this inside VS2010?

EDIT: When I go to my .rpt file to edit it with Crystal Reports, I get a white screen filled with what appears to be random HEX character sets and periods. I have downloaded the CR for Visual Studio, however it still happens, is there an extension I need to include somewhere? I have my target framework as 4.0 and I have the CrystalDecisions assemblies loaded in my web.config.

2
asp.netvisual-studio-2010crystal-reports
The installer should also add a crystal reports plugin in VS.NET IDE. After installation of the package do you get the same error. Worth trying to restart all instance of your VS.NET IDE. – Rajesh
I have re-installed and restarted my VS instances and I still get the same error, is there an extension that I am supposed to manually install? – EvanGWatkins

2 Answers

1
votes

I also had this problem after installing "SAP Crystal Reports, version for Microsoft Visual Studio" recently - over two years later.

I specifically installed Support Pack 8 on 64-bit Windows 7 Pro and found that the fix for me was to:

(1) Run the install executable rather than an MSI per SAP's note that this is critical to full integration with Visual Studio (all the way back to the RTM release):

Please note: To integrate "SAP Crystal Reports, developer version for Microsoft Visual Studio" into VS 2010 or 2012, you must run the Install Executable. Running the MSI will not fully integrate Crystal Reports into VS. MSI files by definition are for runtime distribution only.

(2) Run it with Visual Studio closed.

(3) Run it as Administrator.

Even doing (1) and (2) in the list above without (3) yielded an error at the end of installation (even though the account I used was a member of the local Administrators group). Unfortunately I (uncharacteristically) did not note the error and just continued. :P

Bottom line, even though "SAP Crystal Reports, version for Microsoft Visual Studio" showed in Windows' Programs and Features control panel and I could add CR items to and reference CR assemblies in Visual Studio projects afterward, hex-like garbage rather than the expected report designer greeted me when I opened CR .rpt files in Visual Studio - just like the OP described.

So I closed Visual Studio and uninstalled "SAP Crystal Reports, version for Microsoft Visual Studio" through Windows' Programs and Features control panel.

Further doing (3) in the list above when I ran the installer executable again (i.e. running it as Administrator), I encountered no errors; and afterward the expected report designer rather than hex-like garbage greeted me when I opened CR .rpt files in Visual Studio: problem solved.