How to license ActiveReports for .NET
Note: This article is not applicable to ActiveReports 6. Please see this page for ActiveReports 6 license related questions: How to License ActiveReports 6
Licensing the machine for ActiveReports for .NET 1. Locate the original downloaded electronic store package or shipped CD. 2. Locate the licensing application based on the edition a. Standard Edition: License.Exe b. Professional Edition: LicensePro.Exe 3. Run the machine licensing executable you located in the above step. 4. Enter the information as prompted (User Name, Company Name) without commas or periods. (The keys in the web.config file are comma delimited and entering a comma will cause errors.) 5. Determine whether your project is a Windows Forms Solution or a Web Form Solution. Visit the appropriate section below.All Projects 1. License the ActiveReports using the SetLicense method. a. Create a "web.config" key by running the "Create Web.Config Key" described in the Web Forms section. b. In your application class, create a report instance and use the SetLicense() method to properly set the key you created from Step A. The string value for the generated key should be "[Name], [Company Name], [Serial Number], [Hash Code]". c. Note: Earlier versions of ActiveReports do not contain this licensing option. To insure this option is available please download the latest version of the product. Windows Forms Projects Only Please note the above steps will license your machine for new Windows Forms projects only. If you have an existing Windows Forms project, you will need to open the project after performing the steps above and rebuild the solution. This will work unless you project is a special solution as listed below.
1. If the project does not have a licenses.licx file in the startup project, you will need to add one with one of these methods: a. Add a temporary ActiveReport to the startup project and rebuild the entire solution from the build menu. b. Copy the licenses.licx from the project containing the reports to the startup project. Make sure the build action is set to ‘Embedded Resource’. 2. If the startup project includes a licenses.licx file, make sure it includes the following line: DataDynamics.ActiveReports.ActiveReport, ActiveReports 3. If the startup project only contains an End User Designer a. One method is to add a new designer to the project, then choose Rebuild from the Build menu. Once this is done, and you've verified that the "DataDynamics.ActiveReports.Designer.Designer, ActiverReports.Design" line has been added to your licenses.licx file, you can safely remove the extra designer from the project. b. The other method is to add the "DataDynamics.ActiveReports.Designer.Designer, ActiverReports.Design" to the licenses.licx file manually. Once this is added, Rebuild the Solution from the build menu.Web Forms Projects Only If you are using a Web Forms project you will need to run the utility to create a web.config key for your project. This utility is usually located under the Start Menu in ‘All Programs’ -> ‘Data Dynamics’ -> ‘ActiveReports for .NET’ -> ‘Create Web.Config Key’. You then need to enter the same information you used to license the machine and it will create a key that you can copy into your project's Web.Config file to get rid of the licensing message. The web config key will look something like this:
<configuration> <appSettings> <add key="DataDynamicsARLic" value="FIRST NAME,LAST NAME,LICENSE KEY,KAJSDKQFGJKJSADFFP" /> </appSettings></configuration>