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.