Side-by-Side Installation

Once ActiveReports 8 is installed on your system, it becomes the primary report designer. This means that when Visual Studio opens one of our proprietary file types, RPX or RDLX, it uses the ActiveReports 8 version of the following Visual Studio integrated features:

Integrated report designer
Report menu
ActiveReports toolbar
Report Explorer (or Data Explorer in Data Dynamics Reports)
Toolbox tabs

The included ReportDesigner.Switcher tool allows you to change which packages are registered in Visual Studio. You can change between ActiveReports 6, ActiveReports Developer 7 and ActiveReports 8 for the RPX designer, and between ActiveReports Developer 7, ActiveReports 8 and Data Dynamics Reports for the RDLX designer.

Tip: You can still access some of the integrated features even if they are hidden.

Alternate Report menus are visible, but disabled unless you are on the right type of report.
Right-click in the Visual Studio toolbar area to select which toolbars to show.
The Visual Studio View menu, under Other Windows, lets you select Report Explorer versions.
Toolbox tabs are still visible for other versions, but ones that do not work with the current designer are disabled.

With ActiveReports 8 as the primary designer, if you open an existing code-based report from ActiveReports 6 or ActiveReports Developer 7, Visual Studio knows to use the ActiveReports 6 or ActiveReports 7 designer, but if you open an xml-based report from ActiveReports 6 (RPX), ActiveReports Developer 7 (XML or RDLX) or Data Dynamics Reports (RDLX), Visual Studio sees the proprietary file extension and opens it with the most recently registered package, in this case, ActiveReports 8.

In order to work with ActiveReports Developer 7 RDLX reports, you must run the Switcher tool and change the Primary RDLX designer to ActiveReports Developer 7. If you do not, the reports open in the ActiveReports 8 designer, and the toolbar does not work, you might inadvertently use features from ActiveReports 8 that do not exist in ActiveReports Developer 7, thus breaking the reports when they try to run with the ActiveReports Developer 7 DLLs.

Switching between ActiveReports 8 and ActiveReports 6

Similarly, in order to work with ActiveReports Developer 7 RDLX reports, you must run the Switcher tool and change the Primary RDLX designer to ActiveReports Developer 7 .

Switching between ActiveReports 8 and Data Dynamics Reports