Crystal Report Viewer missing icons when hosted in Access

Question

I'm using Crystal Reports XI Viewer Active control in an Access 2007 (but 2003 format) form. I'm using SQL Server 2008 as the backend. The viewer displays reports fine, but there are no toolbar icons. Buttons and tooltips work as expected, just no images.

Searching for this, I've seen countless references to this problem using the WebForms viewer, but not the ActiveX control.

I thought maybe it was a missing reference, so I added every Crystal version 11 DLL the References dialog offered. I suspect it may yet be another, but don't know what else to look for.

Has anyone else come across this? Any ideas?

(Please don't recommend using Access's built-in reporting instead. Business requirements dictate Crystal so my hands are tied.)

Answer 1

Adding all the DLLs is not going to do anything that dropping the ActiveX control on a form will not already have done. That is, using an ActiveX control automatically creates the appropriate reference in Access.

I recommend against utilizing any ActiveX controls (except the ones that are built in) in any Access app because there are so many installation problems they can cause.

Not all ActiveX controls are compatible with Access, so you need to check with your vendor to see if they think it is. If not, then you're probably out of luck. It's unlikely there are many Access programmers out there who've attempted to use a Crystal Reports ActiveX control in Access itself, as there's not much need for it in the vast majority of Access apps.

Is there some other interface that you can use other than an ActiveX control? What does it do? Display the report in a form?

Answer 2

Problem fixed itself after closing and re-opening Access.

Answer 3

Michael... Can you share the code you used to get the Crystal Active-X control to work in Access? I'm having some trouble getting it to work (first time I've tried this and not finding much help so far -- yours is the only post I've seen where someone got it to work).

thanks...jon