Can't print report after service pack, hotfix or tax update in Dynamics

I appologize to my faithful blog follower Chris G for not being as prolific this week. Chris emailed to remind me I have at least one person reading these posts. Thanks for the encouragement. This ones for you Chris.

I referenced this issue in a previous blog but let me give a few more details. The screen shot below is a GL trial balance that would not print after a tax CODE update. Dynamics simply crashed without giving any useful error. (this was an MSI file that was installed, went through the "include new code" routine in gp.) I'm assuming that this will be an issue with all updates in the future until the GP community revolts and refuses to use report writer any more.



The thing to note is this was not a modified report but it was still giving an error. I tried updating the modified forms and reports like is says in the documentation for SP's but received the same response (GP crashed after generating the report below). I recreated the reports.dic file (see steps below) and it fixed the issue.


Don't know if you can tell from the screen shot but the account numbers were all messed up with a box in the second segment and all spaced out. Click on screen shot for a better look.


Personally I would just do the below process and recreate the reports.dic file when doing updates from now on.

1. Have all user Exit out of GP
2. Save a copy of the reports.dic file
3. log into gp and export out all reports etc. by going to Microsoft Dynamics GP>>tools>>customize>>customization maintenance
4. Select everything in the window and choose export
5. Save reports - I usually name it something like allreportsdate.package
6. Exit out of GP
7. Do the SP, Hotfix, Tax update
8. Delete reports.dic file
9. Log into GP
10. Go to Microsoft Dynamics GP>>tools>>customize>>customization maintenance and choose import
11. Select the file you exported in step 4 and choose Open, then OK. If you receive an error about "unable to open customization dictionary" you probably had someone sneak into GP and it can't import because of it.