Upgrading CRM 3.0 SBE to CRM 4.0 Professional: Part II: The Outlook Client

I posted previously about my experiences upgrading CRM 3.0 SBE (the Small Business Server edition) to CRM 4.0 Professional. One major area I wanted to address also was the upgrade of the Outlook client. We've dealt with a lot of upgrades of the laptop, or offline, client, and run into some issues.

Basically, you want to uninstall the 3.0 client and then do a clean install of the 4.0 client. Of course, you need to be logged in as the user who will be using Outlook/CRM, and have local admin rights.

The problem is that the uninstall of the 3.0 client is not very clean, especially with the laptop client, because it leaves behind the SQL Express databases, and there's no easy way to see them. Simply deleting the files after the uninstall is not enough. You actually have to delete the databases from SQL using Management Studio. Since most people don't have management studio installed on their machines, and due to networking differences, many computers won't be visible to your SQL Server's Management Studio, the workaround we found to work best is to download the SQL Server Management Studio Express (SSMSE) directly onto the laptop. It can be downloaded here.

Once installed, open SSMSE and connect to the local CRM database on the laptop (not on your CRM server!) and right-click and delete the two CRM databases. Then go back and remove any leftover folders or directories before proceeding with your installation of the 4.0 client.

PS: We've seen a few instances where the Outlook client crashes with the 4.0 client installed. Microsoft has a hotfix available, though apparently not for the particular scenario that was causing this crash. We'll keep you posted if we find a fix for this as well!