Crystal Reports on Visual Studio 2010

Our boss is allowing us to install and use Visual Studio 2010 (in beta). That said, Crystal Reports is not yet available for VS 2010. Uggg. Thought this was going to be a deal breaker, but it seems that you can install the CRRedist2008_x86.msi and continue to use Crystal Reports, but just not edit the reports themselves. That said, here is the official documentation that we put in our Wiki:


Crystal Reports Configuration:
As we all know, Crystal Reports is a necessary evil for the ERS applications we have such as NAO and IO for example. This document was created to walk a developer / System engineer through the installation process and debugging steps.

Installation steps:

Run the MSI installer package called "CRRedist2008_x86.msi".

Important to note is that the installer will install files in two different locations.

1. .Net assemblies in the GAC
2. COM objects under the Program Files\Business Objects directory.

Also important to note is the Crystal Report .Net assemblies use COM interOP with the Crystal Reports COM objects.

If things go well, everything should work but typically is not the case. Below are a number of steps to try in case things don't go according to plan.

1. In the folder “c:\program files\ business objects\” make sure the local group on the server called “Users” has full control of it and its subdirectories. (Read permissions will not suffice)
2. Look into the GAC using Windows Explorer at “C:\WINNT\assembly”. Scroll through the list of assemblies and look for ones starting with the words CrystalDecisions.xxxxx. If you don’t see any, run the “CRRedist2008_x86.msi” installer again. If you do see some, make sure you see the version number of 10.5.3700.0. If you see an earlier version, you most likely used the wrong MSI installer package.
3. If step 1 and 2 don’t work, look at the file system security settings of the root of the website. Add the local account of “Network Services” and give it full permissions. Make sure the sub directories inherit from the root folder.

Please keep in mind that Crystal reports may install on some servers with no problems but not on others. It can be both perplexing and frustrating as to why this is. As far as we know, there is no rhyme or reason on why this is. Our one suggestion is to give yourself ample time for the Crystal reports installation.

Lastly, if things do work you should see a shiny new PDF document pop up if you selected PDF on the reports creation page. If you see a dialog box asking you to save instead, that just means you don’t have Adobe Acrobat Reader on your computer.