How to disable Auto Linking AKA Smart Linking in Crystal Reports

If you use any of the newer versions of Crystal Reports you’ll find one of the most annoying things about it is the Auto Linking (also known as Smart Linking) “Feature” when setting up tables in the Database Expert.  It’s quite annoying actually.  For me it’s personally broken reports by linking tables incorrectly, sometimes to themselves!  Probably the most annoying thing about it is that even if you happen to setup the links on your own how you like simply adding a table can wreck havoc.  I can’t remember where I found this but it was so important that I made a note of it and filled it away in my essentials collection!  Here’s the hack, it works on Version 10, but it should be something similar for later versions as well (is it just me, or do they release a new version every time they are reacquired?).

First Close Crystal Reports on the machine your making the change to.  Then run RegEdit (if you don’t know what your doing in RegEdit, then stop here, you could screw up your system beyond belief)

Find the KEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Crystal Decisions/Crystal Reports/10/Database options and change the DoAutoSmartLinking key to “No” from “Yes”.

A restart is usually a good bet, but in my case it worked fine without one.  No more Smart Linking and editing reports and creating new ones isn’t as frustrating!