The WPF/Silverlight report viewer is blank after upgrading from version prior to Q1 2014 to Q1 2014 or later

AUTHOR: Ivan Stefanov

DATE POSTED: March 07, 2014

Starting from Telerik Reporting Q1 2014 both the Silverlight and WPF report viewers will support only the implicit styling, i.e. style without the x:Key attribute. For more information regarding the implicit styling please check the related help article - Setting a Theme (Using Implicit Styles). Please note that this is valid only for the report viewer - if you have controls that need the style manager and the new report viewer that supports only implicit styling you can still do that - just follow the steps below.

Because of that after upgrading to Q1 2014 both WPF/Silverlight report viewers may become blank. That is because the themes are no longer embedded in the assembly and are instead distributed as separate files. This means that the report viewer has no theme applied and it becomes blank. In order to apply a theme you will have to migrate from Style Manager to Implicit Styling. To do so follow these steps:

1. Add references to the following Telerik UI for WPF assemblies, which are usually located in C:/Program Files (x86)/Telerik/Reporting Q1 2014/Examples/CSharp/WpfDemo/bin (respectively for Silverlight are located in C:/Program Files (x86)/Telerik/Reporting Q1 2014/Examples/CSharp/SilverlightDemo/bin). In case you are still not prepared to migrate to implicit styling you can use the binaries that include the xaml. However you will still have to add all the xaml files mentioned in the next step, otherwise the Report Viewer will not show up as it will have no style:

   • Telerik.Windows.Controls.dll

   • Telerik.Windows.Controls.Input.dll

   • Telerik.Windows.Controls.Navigation.dll

   • Telerik.ReportViewer.Wpf.dll (for Silverlight it is Telerik.ReportViewer.Silverlight.dll)

2. Add the respective xaml files for the desired theme. The themes are usually located in C:/Program Files (x86)/Telerik/Reporting Q1 2014/WPF/Themes (respectively for Silverlight are located in C:/Program Files (x86)/Telerik/Reporting Q1 2014/Silverlight/Themes). You will need these xaml files for each theme:

   • System.Windows.xaml

   • Telerik.Windows.Controls.xaml

   • Telerik.Windows.Controls.Input.xaml

   • Telerik.Windows.Controls..Navigation.xaml

   • Telerik.ReportViewer.Wpf.xaml (for Silverlight it is Telerik.ReportViewer.Silverlight.xaml)

3. Remove the telerikControls:StyleManager.Theme=”Vista” attribute from the report viewer - it is no longer required since the style manager is no longer used. Instead the themes are applied implicitly to all report viewers in the application, without setting any attribute.

4. Build, run and test the project.

NB: Note that if you are moving to a newer version of the controls both the xaml files and the assemblies have to be updated.