NAV 2013 Upgrade Part I - TextFormatUpgrade2013 Tool

Hi all,

HAPPY DIWALI TO ALL THE READERS.

Let's Talk about upgrading process to NAV 2013. 

As we all know the pre-requisite version to upgrade is NAV 2009 SP1 / R2 and we all know how to upgrade from any older version to NAV 2009 SP1 / R2.

I will break down upgrade process to NAV 2013 to multiple Post -

1) Upgrading the customized Objects.

2) Upgrading the Standard Objects.
3) Data Migration from SQL To SQL.

4) SQL Migration (as native database support is closed).

Let me know if anyone require other information other then above listed points, will include them too.

Let's start with NAV 2013 Upgrade Part I - Upgrading the customized objects.

Old Story -

Before NAV 2013 while doing upgrade to any version we used to pull all customized objects from old customized database and import them into our target database. 

Remember i am only talking about customized objects between 50000 - 99999

Why That cannot be done now? -

As we all know that Forms, Data ports are no longer supported in NAV 2013 but the old version (in this case NAV 2009 SP1 /R2) Navision used to support them. 

And these objects were used in properties and code. Below are some examples of same.

Examples -

In Tables we have  property LookupFormID which now changed to LookupPageID.

In Objects we may have used Form.Run, Dataport.Run which are no longer supported.

Problem -

If we will follow the same process we will get compile time errors due to these references or property. 

Resolution -

Microsoft had come up with a tool in NAV 2013, which can be found in Product DVD inside upgrade toolkit -->Object Change Tools.

How to use the tool ?-

After conversion of forms to pages and upgrading reports to RTC, follow below listed steps.

1) Export all customized objects from base database except forms and data ports as .txt file. 

    (say oldobj.txt)

2) Run Command Prompt as administrator and navigate to folder where the TextFormatUpgrade2013.exe is located in my case it is (D:\Navision Softwares\Application Setup\Dynamics.NAV70.IN.1184336.DVD\UpgradeToolKit\Object Change Tools).

3) Run the Command TextFormatUpgrade2013.exe "C:\Upgrade 1\oldobj.exe"

   where c:\Upgrade 1\ is the folder where i stored the text file from step 1.

4) The tool will update the references and will create folder inside same folder named as Converted which will contain the updated text file.

5) Now we can directly import the updated text file to the target (NAV 2013) Database.

This process only applies to customized objects.

Regards,

Saurav Dhyani

http://saurav-nav.blogspot.com/