How to Make a Report Layout Obsolete in Business Central (Wave 1 2025)

With the release of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Wave 1 2025, it continues to refine the AL development experience — and one of the key improvements is the ability to obsolete report layouts cleanly and officially.

If you’re managing a growing list of custom layouts or updating reports across multiple extensions, this new feature will help you deprecate old layouts safely, keep your solution clean, and guide developers or users toward better alternatives.

Why Obsoleting Layouts Matters

In real-world implementations, layouts evolve:

• Data fields change.
• Users request better designs.
• Old layouts become unsupported.

Without a proper way to deprecate these layouts, organizations risk:

• Confusion about which layout to use
• Broken printouts
• Technical debt piling up over time

Now, with Wave 1 2025, you can mark layouts as obsolete similarly to how you obsolete fields, tables, or procedures.

report 50100 "Sales Invoice Custom"
{
    Caption = 'Sales Invoice Custom';
    UsageCategory = ReportsAndAnalysis;
    ApplicationArea = All;
rendering
{
    layout(CustomLayout)
    {
        Type = RDLC;
        LayoutFile="LayoutsCustomSalesInvoice.rdl";
        ObsoleteState = Pending;
        ObsoleteReason = 'Replaced by layout NewCustomLayout in report 50101.';
        ObsoleteTag = 'BC-2025';
    }
}
}

ObsoleteState: Can be Pending (warning) or Removed (error).

ObsoleteReason: Brief explanation for developers/users.

ObsoleteTag: Identifies when/why it was marked obsolete (your own versioning or tag).

What Happens to Users When a Layout is Obsoleted?

• ObsoleteState = Pending:
  • Users and developers get compiler warnings.
  • The layout is still selectable and usable.
• ObsoleteState = Removed:
  • The system throws compiler errors if any report layout tries to use it.
  • Users can no longer select it at runtime.

The ability to obsolete report layouts in Business Central Wave 1 2025 is a small but powerful feature that can dramatically improve the quality, maintainability.

Whether you’re cleaning up old customer-specific layouts or modernizing your extensions, using Obsolete State strategically will help future-proof your solutions.

Stay Tuned for more updates!!!

Original Post https://ammolhsaallvi.blog/2025/04/28/how-to-make-a-report-layout-obsolete-in-business-central-wave-1-2025/