Reading reports designed with Crystal Reports 9 (or higher)

I-net Clear Reports supports the report templates designed with the Crystal Reports 9 (or higher). Please read also "Problems with external report templates" to see if there could be any problem with you Crystal Reports report.
There are the following possibilities to use the Crystal Reports 9 (or higher) report templates with i-net Clear Reports:

If you have installed i-net Clear Reports on the same system like Crystal Reports 9 (or higher) then you can execute your CR 9 (or higher) reports with i-net Clear Reports. That means i-net Clear Reports reads the report template and executes it at runtime. The execution of a CR 9 (or higher) report read by i-net Clear Reports at runtime will take longer than the execution of a CR 9 (or higher) report that was read into i-net Designer or ReportReader.exe and saved into i-net Clear Reports report file format (please see the next two items).

If you have installed the i-net Designer on the same system like Crystal Reports 9 (or higher) then you can read the CR 9 (or higher) report templates with the i-net Designer and save it into i-net Clear Reports report templates:

1. Install the i-net Designer (or higher) on the computer where Crystal Reports 9 (or higher) is installed.
2. Open the CR 9 (or higher) report template (rpt file) with the i-net Designer.
3. Perhaps you have to change the database connection properties (see dialog “Database | Database Configuration”).
4. Save the report template with a new file name.

The i-net Designer use the i-net Clear Reports report file format for the report files (.rpt).
After you have saved the report template with the i-net Designer into a new file you can:

• use the report template with i-net Clear Reports on system(s) without having CR 9 (or higher) installed
• change the report design with the i-net Designer only
• not open the report template with the Crystal Reports Designer.

If you like to use the CR 9 (or higher) report templates with i-net Clear Reports and/or i-net Designer on a system on which Crystal Reports 9 (or higher) is not installed then you need to use at first the report reader tool (ReportReader.exe) on a system on that Crystal Reports 9 (or higher) is installed to save the CR 9 (or higher) reports in the i-net Clear Reports report file format. These report files you can then use with i-net Clear Reports / i-net Designer on a system on which Crystal Reports 9 (or higher) is not installed.
You can read your report template(s) with the report reader tool (ReportReader.exe) without the i-net Designer. With this ReportReader you can read a single rpt file or all rpt files in a directory (including subdirectories) and save them in the i-net Clear Reports report file format.

To do it:

1. Install i-net Designer or i-net Clear Reports as server/standalone application.
2. Copy the ReportReader.exe into a directory on the computer on that Crystal Reports 9 (or higher) is installed (e.g. in a directory that contains the CR 9 (or higher) report templates). You can find the ReportReader.exe in the installation directory of the i-net Designer.
3. Execute the ReportReader.exe on a console to read one or more CR 9 (or higher) reports, e.g.: