Hi Vannorman,

The old Crystal Report components that enable the printing and viewing of Crystal Report forms and reports will be removed.  Those components are from an obsolete version of Crystal Reports (8.5) that hasn’t been supported by Sage for more than 10 years and, that Sage can no longer legally provide to customers.

For options other than Sage 50 form designer, please take a look at the following KB article.

What are my options if I need additional functionality not available in Sage 50 forms? - KB32636

Is there some technical or legal impediment to Sage from providing and maintaining an interface to the latest version of Crystal Reports?

Frankly, the 'obsolete' and '10 year' stuff sounds pretty "dog ate my homework" from here.

And it doesn't have to be Crystal Reports.

http://www.nichesoftware.co.nz/content/why-crystal-reports-sucks

but it should be simpler to set up than writing a printer driver.

I currently have all our forms (invoices purchase orders etc) set-up in one common folder on the server and everyone draws from them.  Everything is printed to "Adobe distiller"  acrobat professional to turn everything to PDF format.    

So this will no longer work at all even with the new CR?

I can not set up to  printer to the distiller?  

I know I am rambling but I am still trying to come to grips with the enormous change and enormous amount of work that has been forced on us by his company!!

I believe the actual printing, to Adobe Distiller will work the same with the 'Sage 50' forms, or without Crystal Reports forms.  You can use modified Sage 50 forms in a common folder.

Provided the Sage 50 forms can do what you need, you can share them in one networked folder.   We've had to do this with a mix of 32 and 64 bit machines, and a terminal server, to make sure everyone was printing the same invoice.  

If there is more to it than that, i.e. Crystal Reports passes information to Distiller to number the forms and file them or route them accordingly, then that's going to be more of a hurdle.

Sage has only stated that they are removing the Crystal Reports printing capability.   Presumably this goes beyond just 'not installing' it , and would mean that they're ripping out the code that interfaces to it.  (the parts that tell the Crystal Reports Print Engine (CRPE32.DLL) which form to 'run'. )  

There will be an option to "print to CSV' that will continue to export the same data that the current Crystal Reports forms use when you print them.  So, it'll still be technically possible to print them from some sort of desktop-shortcut-batch-file-script type of thing.

Sage has flat out stated that they will not be adding functionality to the current Forms Editor.  Perhaps some third-party developer will make a nice order entry and printing system available, hopefully without the gonky interface bugs that were riveted onto the software in 2008.  

Randy and Vannorman

We at Business Innovations Technology have a utility that will print Crystal Reports. But is not plug and play software, needs to be installed and configured properly, especially in a network enviroment

Does your utility provide printing directly from the Invoice / Order data entry screens, in one step?

Hi,

We actually have created Excel-based sales invoice. It allow you to open/print a sales invoice in Excel.

I don't know if it can help.

Hi,

We actually have created Excel-based sales invoice. It allow you to open/print a sales invoice in Excel.

I don't know if it can help.

Randy

The utility only prints reports that would normally found under the MicroSoft Documents.

So any reports that directly query the database will print using the utiltiy

Invoices ---this is my understanding-- still can be printed and setup under the usual place but instead a Crystal Reports selection it will have "Other Reports". The CSV files will still be generated