Will upgrading from Crystal Reports 8.5 to 11 break the old reports

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Erin Hunt
Erin Hunt ✭
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in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT®: General Discussion
I am going to a new position and they currently use Crystal Reports 8.5. I don't have any experience with 8.5 and would prefer to use 11 as that is what I currently use and feel decent at. My fear is their current reports will not work if we make the switch. Anyone done the switch?
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  • Denise Covington
    Denise Covington ✭
    Ancient Membership Facilitator 2 Photogenic
    Erin Hunt:
    I am going to a new position and they currently use Crystal Reports 8.5. I don't have any experience with 8.5 and would prefer to use 11 as that is what I currently use and feel decent at. My fear is their current reports will not work if we make the switch. Anyone done the switch?

     My understanding is yes depending on how many tables and how they are set up.  The joins work differently in 11 vs 8.5.  Once you open a report in 11 and save any changes, you will no longer be able to open them in 8.5 so be sure to save them to a different file name - maybe XI at the end of each report.

     I recommend saving each report in a new folder for all your newer 11 reports.  Then update the joins in the visual linking expert, run both versions (I'm fairly certain you can have both versions of Crystal installed, you'll just have to open crystal first and open reports from there so you don't inadvertently save a 8.5 report in 11 before you know it is working).

  • James Andrews
    James Andrews ✭
    Ancient Membership Facilitator 2 Photogenic
    Erin Hunt:
    I am going to a new position and they currently use Crystal Reports 8.5. I don't have any experience with 8.5 and would prefer to use 11 as that is what I currently use and feel decent at. My fear is their current reports will not work if we make the switch. Anyone done the switch?
    I have done the switch, but it was several years ago. The answer is yes, they'll break. Or I should say, they'll probably break, but inconsistently and in odd ways. We had several reports that we kept using in XI, that I didn't even know I hadn't converted until I started getting weird calculation errors and hangups, and I would find one table that I hadn't linked correctly or something.

    Anyway, for some reason, 8.5 handled the table linking just fine, but something about 11 doesn't. As Denise said, for each of your reports you'll have to go back to the linked table manager and reset all the links to be left outer joins. It's tedious but worth it, since XI has many features that 8.5 doesn't. Of course since XI they've come out with CR2008, 2011, and 2013, so we're now four versions behind current, but hey, it works...

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