Importing ACCPAC Report Writer Reports

Since the ACCPAC Report Writer cannot be used with Sage Pro ERP 7.0 and later versions, Stonefield Query has a feature that allows you to import ACCPAC Report Writer reports into Stonefield Query. Due to differences between the ACCPAC Report Writer and Stonefield Query, the reports you import may not look the same in Stonefield Query, but the import process will do the majority of the work in the conversion process.

To import ACCPAC Report Writer reports, do the following steps.

Step 1: Exporting Reports from the ACCPAC Report Writer.

You must first export the reports from ACCPAC Report Writer. To do that, perform the following tasks in the Pro Series 6.5 Report Writer program before you install Sage Pro ERP 7.0 or later. Note that it is important that you select only Datasets that contain reports. For example, in the Report Writer sample data, there are no reports created within the "PO Transactions" Dataset.

Open the Report Writer and select Report Manager from the Report Writer menu. Select a company. The next screen shows the Dataset names. Click each Dataset to show the report names associated with it. If no names appear, do not export the Dataset (if you do, the zip file you are building will be deleted). Make a list of the Datasets you want to export.
Select Export Reports from the Maintain menu. Select the first Dataset you want to convert. Click Add to add it to the list of Reports Selected. Click Save. The Dataset is compressed into a file called FREXPORT.ZIP.
To add additional datasets, select Export Reports from the Maintain menu. Select the next Dataset you want to convert. On the "Select Report or Reports to Export" screen, click Add All, then click Save. The Dataset is added to FREXPORT.ZIP.
Repeat these steps for each dataset that you want to save and export.

Note: FREXPORT.ZIP is created in the FRDATA folder which is a subdirectory of the Pro Series system folder. Make sure you copy this file to a different location, as you will be deleting the FRDATA folder in the next step.

Step 2: Removing the Report Writer Application.

You must remove the Pro Series 6.5 Report Writer application prior to converting to Sage Pro ERP 7.0 or later. To remove the Report Writer:

Confirm that you have exported all the reports that you want to convert (see step 1 above).
Open the System Manager and select Maintain > Companies > Companies. Select Company 99 and click Appls. Use the picklist to select FR. Entering the letters FR does not display the application.
Click Delete to delete the FR application.
Exit Pro Series.
Open Windows Explorer and delete the FR and FRDATA folders from the Pro Series root directory (for example, C:\PRO65\FR and C:\PRO65\FRDATA).

Step 3: Importing Report Writer Datasets into Stonefield Query.

Once you install Sage Pro ERP 7.0 or later and Stonefield Query, you can import your Report Writer reports into Stonefield Query. To import Report Writer reports into Stonefield Query:

Unzip the file FREXPORT.ZIP (this is where you exported the reports to). We recommend unzipping this file into an empty folder.
Start Stonefield Query.
Select the Import ACCPAC Report Writer Reports function from the Stonefield Query File menu and, when prompted, select the FFPREFER.DBF file from the folder that you unzipped FREXPORT.ZIP into. Stonefield Query will create a report for each Report Writer report in the export set.
After this process is done, you may edit the report layouts if desired to make them look more like the original Report Writer reports.