Downgrade SSRS from 2016 to 2008

Question

We have 2 environments at work one for SSRS 2016 and another for 2008

mistakenly I open one of 2008 reports in VS2016 now I cannot open it in 2008

how can I downgrade an SSRS report opened in 2016 back to 2008?

Answer 1

I managed to do that

1- change the

<Report xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sqlserver/reporting/2016/01/reportdefinition

to

<Report xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sqlserver/reporting/2008/01/reportdefinition

2- Remove <ReportSections> Tag ( not the inner tags, just the parent tag)

3- Remove <ReportSection> Tag which will be a child for point number 2 ( again not the inner tags, just the parent tag)

4- Remove <ReportParametersLayout> tag and all its children.

5- Remove <GridLayoutDefinition> tag and all its children.

Answer 2

1.Create a new Report Server Project in Visual Studio 2019. To do it, you need to install that extension.

2.Change file names from rdls to rdl.

3.Add rdl files to project.

4.Change TargetServerVersion in project properties to SQL Server 2008

5.Right click on rdl file in Visual studio and select build.

6.New generated rdl file will be at bin\Release or bin\Debug folder.