Unable to Open Customizations Dictionary

Microsoft Dynamics Great Plains uses a reporting tool called Report Writer. I've given it somewhat of a bad rap in the past. I hope I haven't hurt anyone's feelings with my disparaging words.

One of the most common errors I see people referring to is the "Unable to open customizations dictionary" error when trying to import a new report into the reports.dic file. The resolution to this error is talked about in tech doc 919440 and 869323. Nine times out of Ten the resolution includes getting everyone out of GP then trying to import the file again. (Tools>>customize>>customization maintenance).

Error message something like this:

I suppose if you don't have much to do, or have more than a few users and those users don't have that much to do, it's not really a problem to kick everyone out of the system. But often I'll hear "Oh fiddle sticks, I'll have to wait till tonight to do this" as there's no way to kick everyone out of the system during the day.

When I have the patience and energy I use the following steps to bring in the new reports so that users can still be in the system and the import is still successful.

1. Make a backup of the Reports.dic file
2. Save your package file where you can browse to it from Dynamics
3. Change the path to the reports.dic file in the dynamics.set file to a new location. (By default the Dynamics.set file is in the GP folder where Dynamics is installed. Open with notepad and the reports.dic file is the 3rd line down where the paths start to all the products.) Change the path to a new location or simply change the reports.dic file path to end with reports2.dic instead of reports.dic
4. Launch Dynamics and open Customization Maintenance (Tools>>customize>>Customization Maintenance)
5. Import the new report from the package file to the new reports2.dic file
6. Exit out of Dynamics
7. Change the reports2.dic path back to what it started with in step 3, in our case ending with reports.dic
8. Launch Dynamics and open report writer (Tools>>Customize>>Report Writer)
9. Choose Import on the right
10. Browse to the Reports2.dic dictionary file, highlight the report and press insert (You may be asked to overwrite the current report if you already have that report in the system), then press "Import" at the bottom to bring in the report.

Not the easiest but works without getting everyone out of the system.