Crystal Reports for VisualStudio 2005

I have been having an issue with Crystal Reports for VisualStudio 2005 (VS.2005), where I was getting an error message saying ‘ABSOLUTE PATH INFORMATION IS REQUIRED’. Some of this problem I solved by using System.Windows.Forms.Application.StartupPath in front of the filename for the RPT report file when I tried to display the report. But that did not fix all the problem. In fact that did not fix any of the problem as far as I could tell.

So, I googled ‘ABSOLUTE PATH INFORMATION IS REQUIRED’ and I actually visited EVERY single link. And there was generally not much that was relevant. Adding the startup path was all that was mentioned. Great! And it didnt work. Then I looked at the BusinessObjects WWW site, and found exactly one suggestion for a fix. Go to My Computer | Properties | Advanced and look at the PATH environment variable. Change this from something like %WinDir% to C:Windows. But this only related to VS.2003, not VS.2005. I tried it anyway, and it did not work!

After a while I had a brainwave… Why don’t I just try running the compiled version of my code. And guess what? It worked. It should not have worked but it did. That was more confusing… WHY?

Then my computer needed a reboot thanks to too many copies of VisualStudio running… and when it restarted guess what happened? It worked… Changing the environment variable, and adding the full path, and a reboot fixed everything!