After compiling a program and a CR report in VB .NET I can see the data in the CR report.

I then quit the program, make changes to the report to pretty print it and fix things etc., then I have to recompile the VB .NET prgram again to view the report. Then I have to go back to make changes, recompile, ad infinitum.

Is there a way to preview the report from within VB .NET (something like in FoxPro) so that I don't have to recompile the application every time I make a change?

Hi, Tony,

You've described a portion of my workday! ;)

I often have to do the same thing. A couple of items:

1) You can't preview a CR.NET report from within the current Visual Studio.NET environment. (This has been addressed in VS.NET 2005 - you'll be able to preview reports in the CR.NET designer).

2) Depending on how you've defined your data source for the report, you may be able to make changes and preview from the 'stand-alone' version of the designer. For example, I have Crystal Reports 10, and I build my reports based on an XML schema. Even though my reports are part of the VS.NET project, I can still edit them in CR10, and I can preview (because I load the XML file schema with sample data, so that I can effectively preview), etc. And then when I'm done, I save the report, close the CR10 designer, and then recompile the app.

Hope that helps. If you need any more info or have any more questions, let me know.

Kevin