Sunday, June 24, 2007

Deploying Crystal Reports - Visual Studio 2005

As you already might know, a free version of Crystal Reports is installed/bundled with Visual Studio 2005.

Now to deploy an application that uses Crystal Reports, the resources on the internet suggests using one of the following methods to deploy the Crystal Reports redistributable package.

1- Using Crystal Reports for .NET Framework 2.0 Windows Installer:
Which I failed to find online, even on the Business Objects online downloads section, but doing a complete search for "CR*.msi" on my hard disk, I managed to find it on the following path:
[Microsoft Visual Studio 8 Install Folder]\SDK\v2.0\BootStrapper\Packages\CrystalReports\CRRedist2005_x86.msi

2- Using Merge Modules:
For which you should create a setup project for your application and in there, you should right-click the setup project node in the Solution Explorer, and select "Add Merge Module", and browse to the following path:
[Windows Root Drive]\Program Files\Common Files\Merge Modules\CrystalReportsRedist2005_x86.msm
This most probably won't be found on your machine!!
I wonder why this merge module wasn't installed with Crystal Reports.
So what you need to do is to go to the Business Objects download site, download this file and put it where it should have been put (in the above path).
Now build your setup project, and Crystal Reports run-times will be installed with your application.

7 comments:

Walaa M Atef said...

I haven't used it with SSL before.

It's a pitty that I don't speak spanish.
It would be nice of you, if you can sum it up here.

fabianse said...

Thank you!
I searched for:
deploying crystal reports visual studio 2005

And your link appears on top.

Unknown said...

Great post on Deploying CR for VS05. Led me to exactly what was needed.

Anonymous said...

Thanks a bunch! I finally got a good idea about what I needed to install, and then about tore my hair out on the bus obj /SAP site, when I couldn't locate the mm file for 2005.

Anonymous said...

Sensible...to the point. Much appreciated!

Anonymous said...

That was what I needed! thank you!!!

Gaurav Panwar said...

Thanks very much...i exactly got what i was needing from a long time. Bless you.