Crystal Reports Migration to Power BI Paginated Reports and DevExpress Reports

Codegato converts existing SAP Crystal Reports into Power BI Paginated Reports or DevExpress Reports. Our own converter typically does 60 to 90% of the work on each report automatically and produces a conversion report that lists everything still to be done. Experienced report developers complete those items by hand, and every converted report is compared with the original Crystal output, page by page, until the two match. You keep the layouts, calculations and printed documents your business relies on, on a platform that fits your plans for the future.

Why Crystal Reports migration is needed

Crystal Reports is still a capable reporting tool, and SAP continues to release new versions. The pressure to migrate comes from the product lifecycle and from the platforms around it:

Every version has a support deadline. SAP ends mainstream maintenance for Crystal Reports 2020 on December 31, 2026, and for Crystal Reports 2025 on December 31, 2027. After that date a version receives no new patches or fixes. Staying on Crystal Reports means a new upgrade, new licenses and a new round of report testing every few years.
Embedded reports hold .NET applications back. Crystal Reports for Visual Studio is built for the .NET Framework; modern .NET (.NET 8 and later) is not supported. SAP has also stopped supporting the 32 bit runtime since December 2025. An application that embeds Crystal Reports cannot move to modern .NET while its reports stay in Crystal.
One platform for all reporting. Organizations that already use Power BI want their operational reports in the same place, with the same security and sharing. Development teams that build on .NET want reports that live in the same code base and are deployed together with the application.

Power BI Paginated Reports, not Power BI dashboards

A Crystal report is built around the printed page: invoices, statements, letters, labels and regulatory forms that have to print the same way every time. In the Power BI family, the tool made for this kind of output is Power BI Paginated Reports, designed in Power BI Report Builder. Microsoft describes paginated reports as reports made to be printed, laid out precisely and running over as many pages as needed to show every row of a table.

Standard Power BI reports and dashboards are built for interactive exploration of a data model. They are excellent for analytics, but turning a Crystal report into a dashboard is a redesign, not a migration: page breaks, headers and footers, running totals and the exact printed layout do not carry over. That is why we migrate Crystal Reports to Power BI Paginated Reports. If you also want interactive dashboards on top of the same data, our BI and report development team can build them as a separate project.

DevExpress Reports for your .NET applications

If your reports are part of your own software, DevExpress Reports is the natural replacement for Crystal Reports for Visual Studio. DevExpress Reports runs on .NET 8 and later as well as on the .NET Framework, and works in WinForms, WPF, ASP.NET Web Forms, ASP.NET MVC, ASP.NET Core and Blazor applications. Like Crystal Reports, it uses banded reports with report, page, group and detail sections, so the structure of your existing reports carries over directly.

Automated conversion, completed by hand

Converting hundreds of reports entirely by hand is slow, and converting them entirely automatically leaves gaps that nobody sees until a user finds them. We combine both. Our own converter reads each Crystal report and generates the Power BI Paginated Report or DevExpress report automatically. Depending on how complex the report is, it typically completes 60 to 90% of the conversion.

For every report the converter also produces a conversion report that lists everything that still needs manual work. Our report developers use it as a checklist and complete every open item by hand, so nothing is left unconverted and nothing is left to chance. You get the speed of automation and the exact result of manual work.

Both the converter and our developers rely on our own Crystal Reports technology. We develop Codegato Version Control for Crystal Reports, which reads Crystal report files and compares every property between versions: SQL, formulas, SQL expressions, formatting and field positions. Building it taught us exactly where Crystal Reports keeps its logic, including the settings that are easy to miss when a report is only opened in the designer. That knowledge goes into every conversion.

It is also worth knowing that SAP's license terms for the Crystal Reports runtime do not allow it to be used to create a product, for distribution, that converts Crystal report (.RPT) files to a format used by a non-SAP reporting product (SAP Software Use Rights, section 15.2.7). Our converter does not use the SAP runtime. Where we do use it, to run and export Crystal reports, we use it strictly as its license allows.

Verified against the original

A migration is finished only when the new report produces the same result as the old one. For both Power BI Paginated Reports and DevExpress Reports we:

run the original Crystal report and the converted report with the same parameters against the same data;
compare the two outputs visually, page by page: layout, fonts, positions, totals and page breaks;
correct every difference and compare again, until the outputs match.

The comparison uses the unit testing built into Codegato Report Manager. It keeps the approved output as a golden file and compares new runs as images, to detect changes in layout and content, and as values, to compare Excel output cell by cell. The same tests can keep running after the migration and catch future changes in the reports or the data.

How the migration works

Report review. Together with you we list the reports in use, their data sources, parameters and the way they are delivered. Reports nobody uses any more are retired instead of converted.
Choice of target. For each report we agree on Power BI Paginated Reports or DevExpress Reports, based on where the report is used and who maintains it.
Automated conversion. Our converter converts each report and produces its conversion report.
Manual completion. Report developers complete every open item from the conversion report by hand.
Visual comparison. The original and the converted output are compared until they match.
Delivery and parallel run. You receive the converted reports and can run the old and the new version side by side before switching over.

After the migration

Codegato Report Manager runs Crystal Reports, Power BI and DevExpress reports in one place. You can view, schedule, export and email the converted Power BI Paginated Reports and DevExpress Reports next to the Crystal reports that are still in use, so the migration can happen gradually, report by report. Read more about Codegato Power BI Viewer and Scheduler.

Frequently asked questions

Is Crystal Reports being discontinued?

No. SAP continues to release Crystal Reports. Each version, however, has its own end of mainstream maintenance (December 31, 2026 for Crystal Reports 2020 and December 31, 2027 for Crystal Reports 2025), after which it receives no new fixes. Many organizations use the next deadline as the moment to move their reports to the platform they already use for the rest of their data.

How much of the conversion is automated?

Typically 60 to 90% of each report, depending on how complex it is. The conversion report shows exactly what remains, and our report developers complete it by hand. Every converted report is then compared visually with the original before it is delivered.

Should we choose Power BI Paginated Reports or DevExpress Reports?

Power BI Paginated Reports is the better fit when your organization uses Power BI and the reports are shared with users through the Power BI service. DevExpress Reports is the better fit when the reports are part of your own .NET application. One migration can include both targets.

Can we keep using Crystal Reports during the migration?

Yes. The original reports keep running until each converted report is verified and accepted. With Codegato Report Manager both versions can run side by side.

Start your migration

Tell us how many Crystal reports you have and which platform you are moving to, and we will get back to you.