Microsoft Reporting Services Projects Visual Studio 2017 Extension 2.0 Downgrade to 1.24

Question

Recently Microsoft released version 2.0 of their Microsoft Reporting Services Projects Visual Studio 2017 Extension which vastly changed the query designer so that it comple

Answer 1

In case anybody reads this via future searching (and for the other person who posted having an issue with this), the way this can be fixed is much easier than expected. The answer is to follow a relatively simple procedure:

1. Backup any important files, solutions, projects, etc. as your mileage may vary with this process
2. Uninstall the Microsoft Reporting Services Project Extension from Visual Studio 2017 (Tools -> Extensions & Updates) [You'll need Admin privileges for this]
3. Close All Visual Studio instances
4. Download 15.8.0 (or whatever version you'd prefer, 15.8.0 has the SSRS extension version of 1.24) from Microsoft's SSDT previous versions page: Microsoft SQL Server Data Tools - Previous Versions.
5. Install the aforementioned downloaded version and select Visual Studio 2017 for the instance and then just Reporting Services for the packages (The first option is ALWAYS selected so there is nothing you could do to avoid it, I don't think).
6. Once the install completes, open Visual Studio 2017 as Administrator (This is indeed different from normally opening it, even as an admin on the PC)
7. Go to the Extensions & Updates section (again, Tools -> Extensions & Updates) and disable "Automatically update this extension" via the right-hand detail pane. You can also verify you have version 1.24 here as well.

That should be it and you should be good to go at that point. Only caveat is that you may need to "clean" any Reporting Services projects via Clean Solution (I had to at least).

As always, your mileage may vary and you should ALWAYS do backups of your PC/files (and/or create a restore point) in the event something goes pear shaped or is incompatible.

Best of luck everyone and I hope Microsoft reverses forcing this new "simplified" (essentially useless) interface onto the visual query designer.