Installing and using ReportViewer in Visual Studio 2022 Windows Forms

I have tied several times to install the report designer and report viewer into studio 2022. The install for the report designer worked fine. I can create wizard and do-it-yourself .rdlc reports. I'm totally new to this. All of the online tutorials about using the report tools start with 'drag a report viewer into a form and start configuring it.' Installing the report viewer to the toolbox is from the nuget package and then the dll from browsing the project folder for the dll. Unfortunately when I added the report viewer to the form from the toolbox, the report viewer drops below the form and will not let me configure it as in all the tutorials. I have tried the report viewer 2010, version 11, version 12, and version 15 packages including the one that said it fixed a problem with the package not installing all the needed dlls. According to the tutorials there should be a smart tag. This does not happen, and I cannot see any properties i can link to the report. I've tried linking the reportviewer to the rdlc by putting it into the localreport ReportEmbeddedResource property but nothing shows when you run the code. Have I not set this up correctly, or is the tool not working?

124k 18 18 gold badges 222 222 silver badges 421 421 bronze badges asked Jan 17, 2023 at 10:45 kevin rowe kevin rowe 75 1 1 gold badge 1 1 silver badge 6 6 bronze badges Commented Jan 17, 2023 at 21:18

1 Answer 1

You need to install the followings:

Note 1: this answer is targeting .NET Framework projects. If you want ReportViewr for .NET 5+ , or .NET Core 3.1+ you may want to use ReportViewer Core

Note 2: You may find some useful information in Add the Report Viewer control to a new Windows Forms project docs article as well.

Note 3: There is an extension Microsoft Reporting Services Projects 2022 which is for creating Report .rptproj projects which is for Reporting Service Reports (RDL); It doesn't add the RDLC report template or Report Application project template, or RDLC report designer.

Visual Studio 2022 - RDLC reports and ReportViewer in Windows Forms

Here is a step by step example:

  1. Install Microsoft RDLC Report Designer 2022, and restart VS.
  2. Create a new Windows Forms .NET Framework project.
  3. Install the Microsoft.ReportingServices.ReportViewerControl.Winforms NuGet package, which will add ReportViewer to the toolbox of your project. Note: Optional - You may want to install Microsoft.SqlServer.Types as well to get rid of a warning which complains about version of the library.
  4. Add the following class to your project:

public class Product < public int Id < get; set; >public string Name < get; set; >>

  • Rebuild the solution (project).
  • Add New Item >Report (You can search or find it under C# items), and lets call it Report1.rdlc.
  • Then open the report in design mode (double click). Then Report Data window >New >DataSet Note: The shortcut key for the window is Ctrl + Alt + D, if it's not open.
  • In the DataSet Properties window, click on New . in front of DataSource dropdown, and choose Object Data Source, follow the wizard and choose the Product class and the data source and complete the wizard. Make sure the data source and product class are selected, and then close the new data source window. enter image description here Note: If you forgot to build the project after creating Product class, the class doesn't appear in the list of classes for data source.
  • Open ToolBox > Drop an instance of Table on the report, hover the mouse over the first cell of the second row and click on DB Icon to bind it to Id column, and do the same on second cell of the second row to bind it to Name column. Then save the report: enter image description here
  • Open the form in design mode, and from ToolBox, drop an instance of Report Viewer on the form. You can find it on top or the toolbox under Microsoft Sql Server category. enter image description here
  • Click on the smart tag (the arrow), and choose Report: enter image description here
  • Click on the Choose Data Source, and in the window, choose Product. It will add a productBindingSource to your form: enter image description here
  • Double click on form and add the following code:

    private void Form1_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) < this.productBindingSource.DataSource = new List() < new Product()< Name= "Lorem" >, new Product()< Name= "Ipsum" >, >; this.reportViewer1.RefreshReport(); >

    enter image description here

  • Run the project and see the result: