Using Crystal Reports 2008 standalone to edit CR basic reports?

[Former Member]

Can I use a stand-alone Crystal Reports 2008 to edit reports created with Crystal reports Basic for Visual Studio 2008?

On this project I am working with other developers who don't want to install the full CR 2008 and I really need to to use full CR 2008 to be able to edit a few things in reports I can't do with CR basic in Visual Studio (like changing colors for bars in charts which you can't edit in VS).

I also don't want to use the CR 2008 runtime for running the application, just the runtime which comes with VS 2008.

Is it safe to edit a report in CR 2008 and then use it within Visual Studio (assuming I don't add any CR 2008 specific functions)?

I made a test and installed CR 2008 but without installing the .NET options (however only 1.1 and 2.0 was listed I guess I need to install SP0 to get VS 2008 support anyway). I could change colors for bars etc and save it and open it again in VS 2008. VS complained about

The full CR designer is also much better to work with so if I can use full CR 2008 without affecting my VS application that would be nice (I guess installing the .NET components would force the use of CR 2008 runtime assemblies).

Also another question:

When you use datasets as datasource and use the preview in VS it will use some fake data. But in CR 2008 stand-alone you don't get any data at all. Is there a way to do the same with full CR?

[former_member11696 · Accepted solution]

Hi Magnus,

You can use CR 2008 to edit reports but there are warnings. .NET version of CR is 10.5, based on the CR version 10 functionality. CR 2008 has much more functionality so as long as you don't add any features of CR 2008 to the reports then it should work. But it is recommended that you use the same version for functionality and 100% compatability.

Yes you do need SP0 installed.

You should also upgrade to CR 2008 Developer then you can use the full SDK functionality within .NET and be able to support all the latest OS platforms.

Please post a separate question for your database question. Use one posting for each question, if not the posts tend to get messy.

Thank you

Don