I'm evaluating this product, and I came across an issues. When I tried to load my report, there is a message box that says, "Crystal Reports Windows Forms Viewer," and it displays the message, "failed to open the connection." What am I doing wrong. I like the product interface, and the price is good compared to a full install of Crystal Reports. Please help me with this.
This is a message from the Crystal Reports component saying that it can not connect to the database or data source for the report. To resolve, you must first know what database the report accesses. Then you need to make sure the client computer has the ability to access that data source. Often, the easiest way to set up this source is using ODBC. You can create a new connection from the Control Panel in Windows. From the Control Panel find Administrative Tools. From there, you will see Data Sources. You should add your data source.
I've seen other cases that cause people trouble. For instance, one person was creating a report with an Excel spreadsheet as a data source, and that spreadsheet was installed on his local machine. When other users would try to open the report, they would get this message. In that case, the reason was the client PC's did not have access to the spreadsheet. This could also happen if different PC's access the spreadsheet through a different path.
I've also heard about this error being caused by an error in a report. I don't know the full details on that one, but you can check.
This message comes from the Crystal Reports, and is not part of anything we programmed; I hope we would be more clear. Anyway, if you had a full install of Crystal Reports on that system, it would get the same message.
So, know the name of the data source that the report is trying to access. Set up the client PC to access that data source, through ODBC if possible, using the same name. Check the box that says "use report settings." Once you do all these things, it should just work for you.
Please let us know if this helps. If you are still having the same problem, please post more details.