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Export/import customizations from 3.0 to 4.0?

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Quite a few people have asked us if it is possible to export customization from CRM 3.0 and import them into CRM 4.0. Here are a couple of clarifications:

  • Straight export/import across different CRM versions is not supported; this has been the case since version 1.2. There are several reasons for this restriction but it mostly comes down to the fact that things changed under the covers hence the serialization of the items included in the export file changed… even if you manually tweak the file (which is unsupported) and pass the basic xsd validations you still have a pretty good chance of end up in a bad state.

  • You certainly can bring your 3.0 customizations forward to 4.0 but you have to upgrade your system first. Upgrade takes care of transforming and adding all the necessary bits of information to the schema. After you upgrade, you can export your customizations and import them into another 4.0 system.

Hope the above gives a better understanding on how to move your customizations from 3.0 to 4.0. Here is another related article about import/export of customizations in CRM 4.0.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    January 29, 2008
    It does give me a better understanding. Many Thanks, Carmelo Lisciotto

  • Anonymous
    February 02, 2008
    May I suggest that the message that appear when trying to import 3.0 customisation into 4.0 is more specific an says "3.0 customization import is not supported, please upgrade source to 4.0 before exporting" This would be a 30 minutes dev, that would save thousands of hours lost by partners. Not everybody is with MSCRM since 1.2 and what is obvious to dev team is not for the newcommer, Moreover there is no warning about this problem in 4.0 "whats new" course or SDK which is even worse. Many thank's for your warning that I found searching WEB, This is the only one, by the way, thank's again.

  • Anonymous
    February 02, 2008
    Dominique, good suggestion...will take that into account.  Thanks!

  • Anonymous
    April 09, 2008
    ping back from http://www.castorsoft.com/articles/2008.1.30.htm