Visual Studio Express Edition by Microsoft is a popular software development enveronment. It is popular also because it is free. By the way this tool as all that is free has some lacks. In particular complexities with using some add-onces, third party components.
For example many popular component-packs for .Net have reporting tools in set. Often they use developers environment of Visual Studio (fully or partially) as the visual report development environment. But such way is impossible in Express Edition.
FastReport.Net uses another approach. There are own fully independent report designer which can be called from application (from Winforms Edition and higher). That is Visual Studioàs envirinment does not need for visual design of reports.
So - let's setup FastReport.Net to Visual Studio Express Edition:
1. Create new project in Visual Studio.
2. Right mouse click somewhere on the blank place on Toolbox.
3. Select "Add tab" in context menu.
4. Give the name for new tab, for example FastReports Components.
5. Right mouse click on blank place of our new tab.
6. Select Choose Items in the context menu.
7. Press button "Browse..." Find and set FastReport.dll. It placed at the root folder of FastReport .NET.
8. Components will be shown on tab .NET Framework Components. Ypu can sort them by Namespace. All the components of FastReport .NET are placed on namespace FastReport. Check all needed components and press OK.
Run report designer. Examle on C#
Report report = new Report();
report.Design();
This is it.
