ActiveReports 18 has several major breaking changes, so you should consider this information while migrating to ActiveReports 18.

If you are going to migrate from very old versions of ActiveReports, please see corresponding User Guides or contact our Support Team.

The following steps explain basic step to migrate previous ActiveReports versions to ActiveReports 18.

1. From the Visual Studio Tools menu, select Convert to ActiveReports 18. For more details, see ActiveReports File Converter
   You will also need to manually update the references/dependencies. For more details, see Reference Migration.
   If the license information is not displayed correctly after running the converter, you need to manually update the license information. For more details, see License Migration.
   
2. See details below to migrate any of the following versions that contain specific classes or properties:
   
   ActiveReports 1

   If you export to PDF and use the Version property, you need to change the casing in the PdfVersion enumerated values as follows.
   
   Before migration: PDFVersion.PDF13
   After migration: PdfVersion.Pdf13

   If you are using the public variable 'ds' within the report, see ds Variable.
   If you are using the WebViewer control, see WebViewer Migration.
   If you are using the ActiveX viewer (ARVIEW2.CAB file) in a Web application, see ActiveX Viewer Migration.

   ActiveReports 2

   If you are using the public variable 'ds' within the report, see ds Variable.
   If you are using the WebViewer control, see WebViewer Migration.
   If you are using the ActiveX viewer (ARVIEW2.CAB file) in a Web application, see ActiveX Viewer Migration.
   
   ActiveReports 3

   If you are using the ActiveReport3 class in your project, you need to change ActiveReport3 class to SectionReport class.
   
   Before migration: DataDynamics.ActiveReports.ActiveReport3
   After migration: GrapeCity.ActiveReports.SectionReport

   If you are migrating from an initial version of ActiveReports 3 and use the Barcode control's Style and BackColor properties, then the size of the Barcode control may change on migration. You can set the BackColor property of the Barcode control to White, or manually change the size.
          

   Property	Value
   Style	QRCode, Code49, JapanesePostal, Pdf417, EAN128FNC1 (Any of these)
   BackColor	System.Drawing.Color.Transparent

   
   If you are using the public variable 'ds' within the report, see ds Variable.
   If you are using the WebViewer control, see WebViewer Migration.
   If you are using the ActiveX viewer (ARVIEW2.CAB file) in a Web application, see ActiveX Viewer Migration.
   
   From ActiveReports 6 to ActiveReports 18

   If you are using the WebViewer control, see WebViewer Migration.

      
3. Update the package.json file.
4. From the Build menu, select Rebuild Solution to rebuild the entire solution.
   Note: Between versions 1 and 18, we have updated several class names and package names. This may cause syntax errors on migration. To resolve these errors, see the Breaking Changes topic.

Migrating ds Variable

In ActiveReports 2 or below, when you create a data connection using the Report Data Source dialog, a public variable 'ds' is generated automatically by the report designer. This variable is not generated in ActiveReports 3 or above. If you use this variable in your code for making data connection settings of subreport, you need to change the code as follows.

To migrate code with public variable 'ds'

Before migration

Me.ds.ConnectionString

this.ds.ConnectionString;

After migration

CType(Me.DataSource, GrapeCity.ActiveReports.Data.OleDBDataSource).ConnectionString

((GrapeCity.ActiveReports.Data.OleDBDataSource)(this.DataSource)).ConnectionString;