How to Keep ActiveReports.NET Up to Date on your Machine

Background

Although ActiveReports.NET v16 is the most recent major release of the product, it is common to see minor patches and updates being released throughout each month. With that said, it can be important to stay up to speed as the product ages. This article will serve as a walkthrough to update to a new ActiveReports.NET hotfix or minor release on your machine. This guide assumes you are using Visual Studio 2022.

Updating the Standalone Designer and Embedded Visual Studio Tools From Our Website

If you are looking to update the ActiveReports 16 Standalone Designer or embedded Visual Studio Tools (like the 'Convert to AR16' Tool), you will need to follow these steps:

  1. If you haven't gotten an email about an update to the product, you can go to our ActiveReports Download History Page and check if we are offering a new version for that release. 
  2. If you are using an old release of ActiveReports, you can check out the other links on the same page for all of our previous release versions.

Updating Visual Studio NuGet Packages

When using ActiveReports 16 within a .NET project, each dependency is installed into the project with the NuGet Package Manager. To upgrade a package to a newer version, follow these steps:

  1. Right-click your project in the solution explorer of Visual Studio, and select “Manage NuGet Packages…”.
  2. Once in the NuGet Package Manager, go to the “Installed” tab, find whichever GrapeCity.ActiveReports assembly you want to upgrade, and select it from the list. On the right side, you can choose which version you’d like to upgrade to and click the update button.
    1. If you are running into errors while trying to upgrade, you can try to uninstall the package and reinstall it from scratch. To do this, click the “Options” button within the selected GrapeCity.ActiveReports package and check the checkbox that says “Force uninstall”. Then, click the “Uninstall” button. 
    2. After uninstalling the package, you can switch to the “Browse” tab of the NuGet Package Manager and search for the package you just uninstalled. Once you find it, select the version you need and click “Install”.

If you are still having trouble upgrading the ActiveReports 16 product or Visual Studio packages, you can create a support ticket here, and our technical engagement team will work with you further.

Christian Wirt