How can I preview a Sage Enterprise Management report inside of SAP Crystal Reports?

2 minute read time.

Previewing a report to ensure proper formatting and correct results is smart. The ability for a report writer to preview a report within Crystal Reports designer can be a real time saver.

In support, we are occasionally asked how to preview without an error. Some of the common errors that a designer will see are:

A table or view cannot be found

When using TextForCode, TextOfChapter, TranslatedTextForCode, X3TranslatedText functions we may also see errors like:

  

The official response is to use the Crystal Report Connector and preview the report inside of the Sage Enterprise Management application. You can find details on how to use this tool in my blog: https://sagecity.na.sage.com/support_communities/sage_erp_x3/b/sageerp_x3_product_support_blog/posts/how-do-i-create-or-modify-a-crystal-report

You can also review the Online help for Local Crystal Report development and for more details review in the knowledgebase (https://customers.sagenorthamerica.com/)  KB ID 68075 and KB ID 76974.

There is a way!

You can preview the report in Crystal Reports without an error. It requires a bit of trickery.

Warning: The official method for previewing a report is to use the Sage Crystal Report Connector. This method works, but could change in the future without notice.

Cause:

In version 6, there was an installation of a client that included Crystal report drivers and custom .dlls.  These .dlls were not longer updated. Specifically, the U212ltext.dll related to the text functions.  As of Product Update 9, we released the Sage Crystal Report Connector as the solution to preview reports both on-premise and in the cloud.

Workarounds:

Prerequisites:

  1. You will need to setup and configure the DSN that you will use to connect to the data.
  2. You will need to know what values to pass to the parameters when prompted during the preview. You can use GTEST as a method described in my blog post: https://sagecity.na.sage.com/support_communities/sage_erp_x3/b/sageerp_x3_product_support_blog/posts/how-do-i-know-what-parameters-are-being-passed-to-my-crystal-report

Issue: Remove Table / The database table '<TABLE>' cannot be found error.

Workaround: In Set Datasource Location, enter the value for Overridden Qualified Table Name for each table and/or view in the report and all subreports.

Issue: Error: Unable to find language and/or path in general registry. This caused because we are looking for an old V6 registry key that no longer exists.

Workaround:

  • Create a new registry key
    • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Adonix\X3\0,1,5,0\GENERAL
  • Create new String Values
    • Language (enter a value, ie FRA)
    • Path (no value required)

Issue: Error: Local Menu file not found

Cause: We are looking for a path that no longer exists. It cannot find the menus file. You can verify using a Windows Process Monitor.

Workaround:

  1. Create the missing V6 client path (C:\ProgramData\Sage\Safe X3 Client\V1\Data)

  2. You can copy the folder from the print server

Result

You can now preview the report!