Troubleshooting Visual Studio Report Designer

Updated on Oct 9, 2026

The Visual Studio Report Designer for .NET is available as a preview starting with Telerik Reporting 2026 Q3 (20.2.26.1007).

Use the section for your designer. The Visual Studio Report Designer for .NET is installed through NuGet packages. Its problems differ from the problems of the Telerik Reporting Visual Studio extension and its .NET Framework designer.

Troubleshooting the .NET Designer

Start with Getting Started with the Visual Studio Report Designer for .NET to verify the prerequisites, the packages, and the project configuration.

The Designer Does Not Open

Check the following requirements:

• Visual Studio 2026 version 18.10 or later with the .NET desktop development workload is installed. To check your version, select Help > About Microsoft Visual Studio. Visual Studio 2022 and earlier versions of Visual Studio 2026 cannot load the designer.
• The report project is an SDK-style project that targets net8.0-windows or later and sets UseWindowsForms to true.
• The .NET Desktop Runtime of the .NET version that the project targets is installed. For example, a project that targets net8.0-windows requires the .NET 8 Desktop Runtime.
• The project references Telerik.Reporting.VSDesigner and restores its same-version Telerik.Reporting dependency. Any explicit engine reference must use that same version.
• A configured package source provides that version. If the nuget.config file of your solution clears or maps the package sources, it must include and map that source.
• The packages restore without errors, and the project builds.
• You open the report's main .cs file for C# or .vb file for VB, not its .Designer.cs or .Designer.vb file, with View Designer or Shift+F7.

The designer package depends on Telerik.Reporting, which NuGet restores automatically. An enabled source must provide this dependency; it does not need to be the designer feed. Keep an explicit engine reference for report libraries, as described in Configuring Your Report Project.

If double-click opens the code editor, use View Designer. For details about the double-click behavior, see Opening a Report.

The Bundled Sample Does Not Restore

The bundled sample restores without running the installer. Its Sample\nuget.config clears inherited sources and maps the designer to the bundle root and all other packages to nuget.org.

Build the solution in Visual Studio to restore the packages. The script does not configure, restore, or build the sample.

To resolve a restore failure:

1. Open PowerShell in the Sample folder and run dotnet nuget list source.
2. Verify that Sample\nuget.config is present and the ..\ source points to the bundle root.
3. Keep Telerik.Reporting.VSDesigner.<version>.nupkg in that root folder. Check that its version matches the project's designer reference.
4. Verify access to nuget.org and availability of the requested engine, Web Service, GraphQL, and dependency package versions.
5. If a required version is available only from another feed, add that feed and its package-source mappings to Sample\nuget.config. Do not mix Telerik Reporting package versions.
6. Restore and build the solution again. Inspect the NuGet errors in Visual Studio's Output window.

Selecting All in Visual Studio's NuGet Package Manager does not override the sample's <clear /> entry or package-source mappings. Registering a user-level feed with the installer does not make that feed available to the sample unless you also add it to the sample configuration.

For details, see Restoring from Configured Package Sources.

The sample targets net10.0-windows, so it requires the .NET 10 SDK and Desktop Runtime. Open SampleReport.cs with View Designer after the solution builds.

The Previous Designer Build Still Loads

NuGet caches every package version that it restores, and Visual Studio keeps shadow copies of the designer assemblies. If you install a different build that has the same version number, Visual Studio can continue to load the previous build.

If you installed from a bundle, close Visual Studio and rerun the newer bundle's installer. It removes conflicting cached copies of the same version and clears the related designer cache when needed.

For manual installations, follow these steps:

1. Close all instances of Visual Studio.

2. Find the NuGet global packages folder by running the following command. By default, the folder is %USERPROFILE%\.nuget\packages.

   powershell

   dotnet nuget locals global-packages --list

3. In the global packages folder, delete the version subfolder of each Telerik Reporting package that the project references, for example, telerik.reporting\20.2.26.1007 and telerik.reporting.vsdesigner\20.2.26.1007.

4. Delete the contents of the %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\VisualStudio\18.0_<ID>\WinFormsDesigner folder, where <ID> identifies your Visual Studio 2026 installation. If you have more than one 18.0_<ID> folder, clear the WinFormsDesigner folder in each of them.

   This folder contains the shadow copies of all WinForms designers. Visual Studio creates them again when you open a designer.

5. Open the solution, build the project, and open the report in the designer.

If the new build has a different version number, you do not need to clear the caches. Close Visual Studio, and then follow the steps in Updating the Designer Package.

The Preview Build Fails

To preview a report, the designer builds the report project. Fix the build errors of the project before you retry the preview. If the designer reports that the preview build failed, select View > Output in Visual Studio. In Show output from, select Telerik Reporting Preview to see the detailed build output.

For more information about previewing reports, setting report parameters, and exporting, see Previewing Reports in the Visual Studio Report Designer for .NET.

Expected Differences from the .NET Framework Designer

The following differences are by design and are not installation problems:

• The Telerik.Reporting.VSDesigner package does not supply Visual Studio project, item, or report templates. Start with an existing coded report or the bundled sample.
• The package does not install the Telerik menu of the Visual Studio extension. To open Report Explorer, Data Explorer, or Group Explorer, right-click the report design surface and select View > the explorer.
• The designer does not provide an Html Preview tab. The Preview tab does not provide a document map.
• The Preview tab opens the report parameters and the export options in the Report Parameters and Export Report dialogs.
• The Upgrade Wizard does not upgrade .NET projects. Update the package references instead.

If Telerik Reporting is installed on Windows with Visual Studio integration, you can use its blank-report template in a configured .NET project. You can ignore the template warning displayed before the blank report is created and continue. See Configuring Your Report Project for details.

For a comparison of the supported features and workflows, see Comparing the Designers.

Collecting Designer Diagnostics

To collect a trace of a .NET designer issue:

1. Close all instances of Visual Studio.

2. Open PowerShell and enable the trace by running the following command:

   powershell

   $env:TELERIK_REPORTING_DESIGNER_DEBUG = 'trace'

3. Start Visual Studio from the same PowerShell window by running the following command:

   powershell

   & (& "${env:ProgramFiles(x86)}\Microsoft Visual Studio\Installer\vswhere.exe" -version '[18.10,19.0)' -latest -property productPath)

4. Open the project and reproduce the issue.

5. Close Visual Studio and collect the %TEMP%\TelerikReportDesigner.log and %TEMP%\TelerikReportDesigner.client.log files.

To write the logs to another location, set the TELERIK_REPORTING_DESIGNER_LOG environment variable to the full path of the log file before you start Visual Studio. The designer writes the second log to the same folder and adds .client before the file extension. The folder (C:\Logs\ in the example below) must exist, and the designer won't create it if it does not.

powershell

$env:TELERIK_REPORTING_DESIGNER_LOG = 'C:\Logs\TelerikReportDesigner.log'

The variables apply only to the Visual Studio instance that you start from that PowerShell window. To stop tracing, close the window and start Visual Studio as usual.

The logs can contain report data and file paths. Review the logs before you attach them to a support ticket. In the ticket, include the Visual Studio version, the package version, the target framework of the project, and the steps to reproduce the issue.

Troubleshooting the .NET Framework Designer

The following sections apply to the installed Telerik Reporting Visual Studio extension and its .NET Framework designer.

Visual Studio Crashes

When Visual Studio crashes while working with Telerik Reporting, for example, when opening a Report in the Visual Studio Report Designer. The way to determine what has caused the problem is described in the following steps:

• Upgrade to the latest version of the product in case the reason for the crash has been fixed.

• Try to reproduce the crash on another machine to exclude machine-specific problems e.g., corrupted Telerik Reporting installation.

• Provide us with a log file containing detailed information about the Visual Studio crash. To create the log file, turn on tracing for the Visual Studio IDE and perform the actions that caused the crash. Below is the XML you need to add to the devenv.exe.config file to enable tracing:

  XML

  <configuration>
      <!--...-->
  	<system.diagnostics>
  		<trace autoflush="true" indentsize="4">
  			<listeners>
  				<add name="myListener" type="System.Diagnostics.TextWriterTraceListener"
                       initializeData="c:\temp\DEVENV.LOG" />
  				<remove name="Default" />
  			</listeners>
  		</trace>
  	</system.diagnostics>
  </configuration>

  The devenv.exe.config file resides in C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio X.0\Common7\IDE by default (it is recommended to create a backup copy before modifying it).

• Start Visual Studio with the log switch: /Log (devenv.exe) which could also provide more info on the error.

• Check the event viewer logs for any logs that could provide more info about the problem.

• Attach to the devenv.exe running process with another Visual Studio instance, to pinpoint where the error occurs.

After you generate the log files from the above steps, archive them and attach them to a support ticket. Include the steps which have to be followed to reproduce the issue.

The Report Cannot Be Built and Opened in Visual Studio Report Designer

Please refer to the information from the following KB article: The report cannot be built and opened in Visual Studio Report Designer

The Visual Studio Report Designer Is Blank

Please refer to the information from the following KB article: The Visual Studio Report Designer is blank

Missing Telerik Menu in Visual Studio

Please refer to the information from the following KB article: Missing Telerik menu in Visual Studio

Visual Studio Missing Telerik Reporting Toolbox Items

Please refer to the information from the following KB article: Telerik Reporting Toolbox items are missing.

Visual Studio Missing Telerik Reporting Item Template

Please refer to the information from the following KB article: Telerik Reporting Item Template is missing.

See Also

• Getting Started with the Visual Studio Report Designer for .NET
• Previewing Reports in the Visual Studio Report Designer for .NET
• Structure of the Visual Studio Report Designer