I was doing the finishing touches for the POS project I'm working on. I tried to make an installer project (.msi) in Visual Studio 2005 (yes, I've just moved up from VS 2003) but couldn't figure out how to do the merge module for Crystal Reports. My previous installer projects were all for VS2003 and including the merge module was straightforward. I haven't done much with Crystal Reports for VS 2005 other than test it on the web a couple of weeks ago.
According to MSDN, I just have to merge the file CrystalReportsRedist2005_X86.msm. But the file does not exist on my PC. Apparently, its not automatically installed along with VS 2005. Microsoft provides some links pointing to BusinessObjects, the maker of Crystal Reports, to download the merge module from them.
Doing a Google search, the links being returned all do not seem to work anymore. As it turned out, BusinessObjects has been acquired by the German company, SAP. And all the URL's don't seem to work anymore. They are being redirected to SAP and the site that it gets redirected to does not have the info on where I can get the merge module.
The developer download site of BusinessObjects/SAP is just as bad (if not worse). The search page does not work properly with Internet Explorer. It only shows the first page of the result. Clicking on the button to show the next page, or to increase the search results to show, leads to a reset of the search. I tried it on Mozilla Firefox and it worked properly there. But I still did not see the merge modules for VS 2005 -- only for the latest VS 2008. Also just as strange, the drop down list of products available for download only shows 3 products with Firefox, but more than double that when used with IE!
Anyway, Sonny (head of our tech support) finally found some forum discussion which lists where you can find the redistributable runtime for Crystal Reports 2005. Turns out that its part of the Visual Studio installation. Specifically, its in the folder:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\SDK\v2.0\BootStrapper\Packages\CrystalReports\CRRedist2005_x86.msi
I checked my PC and indeed it was there! So forget the merge module, we'll just manually install the redistributable runtime for Crystal Reports of 2005.
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3 comments:
http://resources.businessobjects.com/support/additional_downloads/runtime.asp#07
edwin
I just tried using the Crystal Reports Merge Module for VS2005 and it produced a whopping 28MB setup file from a small program!
Hey Dick,
I know it has been a while since you posted this, but I wanted to thank you for doing so! I was trying to deploy an ASP.NET Crystal Report app and also found the documentation to be lacking. Your tip on grabbing the MSI from the C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\SDK\v2.0\BootStrapper\Packages\CrystalReports\ worked like a champ. Thank you!
Vicky
http://tgaw.wordpress.com
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