Sunday 20 November 2011

Crystal Reports 8.5 - cannot insert field object


I still have to use (ah, the joys of legacy apps) the very old (albeit still on sale, I believe) Crystal Reports 8.5. CR has switched from one vendor to another, to another one, has been taken out of the mainVisual Studio package, it's still and always will be full of quirks, but it has one slight advantage. It gets the job done, even this non unicode 1998 version. Well, there are some compatibility problems: for example you have to force 'Windows 2000 compatibility' on the properties of CRW32.EXE (the report editor) in order to avoid random errors saving the report on XP and later OSes. Another problem, of which I couldn't find the solution online, is that sometimes, appartently randomly but seemingly having to do with something triggered by a dual monitor setup, the insert/field object menu option/button no longer works. Clicking on the item doesn't bring the familiar field/formula list anymore. It is still possibile to cut, paste and modify field object, but the field list is gone.


The solution I found out personally? To fire regedit up and brutally delete all the 'Seagate software' hive in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software and HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software. You will have to re-enter you license key, and probably reinstall, but at least you'll get the damn field list back in a moment...

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