The latest versions of Crystal Reports have a menu option in the “Report” menu called “Check Dependencies”. This is a handy little feature that allows you to see if there is anything that would prevent the report from running. For instance, I often find formulas that use a field or function that is no longer available.

How does a report end up with a missing dependency? Here are two examples:

1) You remove a table and don’t realize that fields from that table are being used.
2) Your formulas use custom functions and those function dlls are no longer available.

I see the second example quite often in reports for MAS90 and PeachTree accounting. Both of these applications provide dlls containing specialized custom functions. But if you open the report on a PC that doesn’t have these function dlls, the report can’t run.

To check the dependencies simply selelct the item from the Report menu. Crystal will generate a list all of the missing dependent objects in the report.