Crystal Reports 2011 just finished Beta and is coming out within the next 6 months (Q2).  Don’t expect dramatic changes.   You can read about the new features in this PDF.  There is also a video of CR 2011 within Enterprise,  which is a slightly different version so the features highlighted are mostly related to enterprise users.  I have also read that the interface for CR within Enterprise will be different than in the standalone version of CR 2011.  The one within Enterprise is more consistent with other Enterprise tools, while the standalone is supposed to be more like CR 2008.

The standalone version mentions the following new features:
1) Read-only RPTs that can only be opened in the CR viewer
2) New XLSX export format

The enterprise version talks about:
1) A new look and feel that is more consistent with other SAP and BO tools
2) Tighter integration with the meta data layer (universe, business views, etc)
3) A translation manager that allows you to store multiple versions of the labels, each in a different language.

But there was one new feature mentioned that was mentioned in the Enterprise version that Continue Reading »
Crystal Reports 2011 coming soon

If you are creating or running an application and your list of export formats is incomplete, the problem is likely some missing dlls on the server/PC where the app is installed.  The list of export formats that you see is not typically controlled in the application code, but instead is determined by the list of dlls that the application finds at runtime.  Each export format has its own dll.  For example the one for text is U2Ftext.dll.  The one for Crystal Reports is U2Fcr.dll.  So if you find where these “U2F” files are stored you can see which are missing.  The complete list of files would be found on the PC that has your Crystal Reports designer.  I have CR2008 on a Win7 64 bit PC so my dlls are in this folder:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Business Objects\BusinessObjects Enterprise 12.0\win32_x86\

Adding the missing files into the same folder should complete your export format list.

If you are using the version of Crystal Reports that comes with Visual Studio 2005 you will only have  seven export formats available.  If you upgrade to the full developer version of CR, or to CR 2008, you have access to the entire list of export formats.