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author's profile photo Paul Gardner
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Paul Gardner
Oct 14, 2019 at 02:24 PM

Crystal Reports will not show up in Visual Studio 2017

3012 Views Last edit Oct 28, 2019 at 02:12 PM 4 rev

This used to be working. I had VS 2017 Professional and Crystal Reports was integrated in it. My MSDN license changed and I uninstalled VS 2017 Pro and instead installed VS 2017 Enterprise.

Now I can no longer edit existing RPT files. Double clicking them brings up a hex editor. Right click and select Run Custom Tool reports back an error Cannot find custom tool 'CrystalDecisions.VSDesigner.CodeGen.ReportCodeGenerator' on this system. So I reran the file CRforVS_13_0_23.exe which was my original installation. This did not help. Next I ran it again but selected to REMOVE components rather than reinstall. Then I went to Control Panel -> Apps and found two installations for Crystal Reports there (32 & 64 bit). I removed both. Finally I reran the same installation file. Still no luck. Crystal is installed on my machine but does not show up in Visual Studio.

What can I do here?

[Edit]
I have been fighting this for a week. So much lost productivity. Can anyone help?

Since the OP, I have gotten closer. I:

  • Navigated to C:\Users\myuser\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\15.0_checksum
    where myuser is my own profile, and checksum is the directory updated most recently
  • Loaded the privateregistry.bin file into Regedit as a new hive
  • Opened the 15.0_Config\Generators area for the following keys:
    {164B10B9-B200-11D0-8C61-00A0C91E29D5}
    {FAE04EC1-301F-11D3-BF4B-00C04F79EFBC}
  • Added new keys inside these for .rpt and .rptr with the default value set to CrystalDecisions.VSDesigner.CodeGen.ReportCodeGenerator
  • Added a CrystalDecisions.VSDesigner.CodeGen.ReportCodeGenerator key with the following data:
    Default: Crystal Reports Code Generator for RPT
    CLSID: {C01CB74B-0037-4F97-99CD-83B18767E138}
    GeneratesDesignTimeSource: 1

Now when I right click and select run custom tool I do not get an error. Visual Studio spins and thinks and does nothing. This is oddly the same behavior as all my coworkers where this is working. Double clicking the file still starts a HEX editor though.