ActiveReports 8
Converting Crystal Reports/MS Access Reports
Show AllShow All
Hide AllHide All

You can convert a Crystal Reports report or a Microsoft Access report to an ActiveReports format by running the ActiveReports Import Wizard.

Running the ActiveReports Import Wizard

The import wizard converts reports to the closest possible ActiveReports format, but due to differences between products and versions, the extent to which your reports are converted depends on your specific report layout. You may have to partially redesign the report and add script or code to get the same output as Microsoft Access Reports or Crystal Reports.

When converting to Page Reports, whether a report is imported as a Fixed Page Layout (FPL) or Continuous Page Layout (CPL), depends on the following factors:

Note: Sections in a report appear as BandedList.

Please refer to the additional information below, to understand the conversion process in detail.

Converting Crystal Reports

To convert Crystal Reports into ActiveReports format, you need to install Visual Studio and Crystal Reports for Visual Studio on your machine. The supported versions of Visual Studio and corresponding Crystal Reports are as follows:

Visual Studio Editions Crystal Reports Assembly Version
2008 Professional, Team System Crystal Reports for Visual Studio 2008 10.5.3700.0
2010 ... SAP Crystal Reports, developer version for Microsoft Visual Studio 13.x.x.x
2012 ... SAP Crystal Reports, developer version for Microsoft Visual Studio 13.x.x.x
2013 ... SAP Crystal Reports, developer version for Microsoft Visual Studio 13.x.x.x

Crystal Report controls are converted in ActiveReports as follows:

Crystal Report Section Report Page Report Note
Box Shape Container The LineWidth property and rounded boxes are not imported. If the Box control extends to multiple sections, the box is imported as line controls.
CrossTab SubReport BandedList CrossTab control is not imported as it is.
Line Line Line The size of Dot and Dash (the LineStyle property) is not the same as the original report.
Subreport SubReport Subreport Set the subreport in code after conversion.
TextObject Label Textbox Only page number, total page, page n of m in Special Fields are imported.
FieldObject TextBox Textbox Only page number, total page, page n of m in Special Fields are imported.
Picture ... Container Picture object is not converted.

Converting Microsoft Access Reports

To convert Microsoft® Access® reports into ActiveReports format, you must have Access 97, 2000, 2002, 2003 or 2007 installed on your system.

Microsoft Access report controls are converted in ActiveReports as follows:

Microsoft Access Report Section Report Page Report Note
Rectangle Shape Container Controls placed inside the Rectangle control are also imported along with the parent control.
CheckBox Label Textbox ...
Image ... Image Image control is not converted while converting to a Section Report.
Label Label Textbox ...
Textbox TextBox Textbox ...
Line Line Line ...
Page Break PageBreak Container In Page Reports, the PageBreakAtEnd property is automatically set to True on importing a Page Break control.
Subform/Subreport SubReport Subreport ...

Limitations in Crystal Report/MS Access conversion

See Also

Concepts

Support Forum