Crystal Reports fails to connect

  • 5 October 2020
  • 2 replies
  • 2712 views
Crystal Reports fails to connect
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As of Windows Server 2019, Microsoft disabled the encryption protocols TLS 1.0 and 1.1 by default, and requires all connections to, for example, SQL Server instances on Windows Server 2019 to use TLS 1.2. This can cause problems with Crystal Reports documents that use the default SQL Server drivers included with Crystal Reports, instead of the Microsoft OLE DB Driver.

To resolve this, you need to replace the drivers used by each report with the latest Microsoft OLE DB Driver for SQL Server, which you can download here. To update the driver in the report file:

  1. Open the Set Datasource Location dialog from the Database menu in the Crystal Reports designer.
  2. Select the connection to replace and click Make New Connection to create a connection using the Microsoft OLE DB Driver for SQL Server or select an existing MSOLEDBSQL connection. Do not use the Microsoft OLE DB Provider for SQL Server (SQLOLEDB).
  3. Select Update to replace the connection.

Repeat this for all Crystal Reports files.

 

An alternative, more future-proof solution is to migrate from Crystal Reports to DevExpress reporting, which does not require any reporting- or database-drivers to be installed. The DevExpress report designer is part of the Thinkwise Platform and can be downloaded from TCP.


2 replies

Hi Jasper,

Thanks for the information. Can you tell me how I can find out which connection our reports use at this moment?

Userlevel 7
Badge +11

Sure. In the Set Datasource Location dialog, open the Properties node and check the Provider. It should say ‘MSOLEDBSQL’.

 

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