How to deploy Crystal Report

The following section describes how to deploy a Crystal Reports components and assemblies on the target machine.

If you are new to Crystal Reports and do not know how to create Crystal Reports from C# , please take a look at the section step by step tutorial for creating a Crystal Reports from C#.

Crystal Reports for Visual Studio ships with your deployment projects that enable you to deploy Crystal Reports components and assemblies on the target machine. We can use different approaches to install Crystal Reports runtime files on the target machine in order to run your C# applications smoothly.

If you are using Visual Studio then during your setup and deployment you can add the CRRedist2005_x86.msi file to your setup file and distribute it as a single setup file with your C# application. The installer can execute the setup file automatically within your .Net Project in a single click. You can find the CRRedist2005_x86.msi file in your system's C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\SDK\v2.0\BootStrapper\Packages\CrystalReports . Also you can distribute the CRRedist2005_x86.msi separately and install it on the target machine where your C# applications installed.

The other way to install Crystal Reports on target machine is to create a setup file using Merge Modules and distribute it with your C# application or as a separate setup file. Click the following link to see how to make a setup file with Merge Modules.