Migrating WinCC Comfort HMI Panels to WinCC Professional SCADA Runtime in TIA Portal V13

Engineers commissioning mixed HMI/SCADA architectures on TIA Portal V13 and V13 SP1 frequently face a recurring failure mode: Comfort Panel screens (TP-700 Comfort, TP-900 Comfort, TP-1200 Comfort, TP-1500 Comfort, TP-1900 Comfort, TP-2200 Comfort) develop without issue under WinCC Comfort/Advanced, but when the same project is later extended with a PC-based SCADA station running WinCC Runtime Professional, the SCADA runtime starts and immediately shows a blank canvas. This reference documents the root cause of the blank-screen failure, the objects that migrate cleanly, the objects that do not, the manual corrections that are required, and the verification sequence that confirms a healthy Professional runtime startup.

1. The Blank-Screen Failure Mode

When a TIA Portal V13 project contains:

• One or more Comfort Panels (for example, TP-700 Comfort as a primary operator panel and two TP-1500 Comfort panels for line overview),
• A PC station running WinCC Runtime Professional (the SCADA node),

...and the engineer copies screens, tags, alarms, and scripts from the Comfort panels into the SCADA station, the typical observed symptoms are:

• WinCC Runtime Professional starts without a hard fault or visible error dialog.
• The configured start screen property still references the originally assigned screen name.
• Nevertheless, the runtime window renders a solid blank (white or default project color) canvas.
• No tags appear online, no alarms are listed, and no operator inputs are accepted.
• No "screen not found" diagnostic is generated by the runtime; the failure is silent.

The failure is not a defective license, a missing HMI device, or a routing issue. It is the predictable consequence of a partial, undocumented object model incompatibility between the two product lines.

2. Architectural Root Cause: Two Different Product Lineages

WinCC Comfort/Advanced and WinCC Professional do not share a common HMI object model. They descend from two historically separate code bases that were both integrated into the TIA Portal shell:

Because the two engines were unified under a single TIA Portal project tree, the IDE permits copy/paste of objects between them, but the resulting screen often does not round-trip through the Professional compiler unchanged. The blank screen is the visible symptom of an internal type mismatch between the imported object descriptors and the Professional object schema.

3. Prerequisites for a Clean Migration

Before attempting any screen migration, verify that the following are present and consistent:

1. TIA Portal V13 SP1 or higher. V13 RTM (without SP1) has documented defects in the cross-lineage object serializer. SP1 is the first release where copy/paste of a Comfort screen into a Professional screen folder consistently succeeds without corrupting the screen object.
2. Matching TIA Portal version on the engineering station and on the runtime PC. A V13 project opened in V13 SP1 must be upgraded; the PC runtime installation must match the engineering version.
3. WinCC Runtime Professional license on the target PC (single-station or server/client as appropriate).
4. Identical HMI tag database in the source and target stations. Tags must be defined in the project library or duplicated manually; the copy/paste of screens does not implicitly recreate the PLC tag connections on the SCADA node.
5. PLC HMI connection on the SCADA station. The Professional station requires an HMI connection in the project tree (under "Connections") pointing to the S7-300, S7-400, S7-1200, S7-1500, or third-party controller that the Comfort panels communicate with. Without this connection, imported screens render blank even if the screen object itself is valid.
6. Operating system parity for VBS. WinCC Runtime Professional requires a 64-bit Windows 7 SP1 / Windows Server 2008 R2 or higher, while Comfort panels run an embedded Windows variant. Any VBS that uses panel-specific file paths, registry keys, or COM objects will fail silently when promoted to the PC runtime.

4. What Migrates Cleanly vs What Does Not

Field experience on TIA Portal V13 SP1, validated against a TP-1200 Comfort source and a WinCC Professional Runtime target, identifies the following object categories.

4.1 Objects that migrate via copy/paste without rework

• Tag tables (HMI tags, including PLC connections and address pointers).
• Static graphics (PNG, BMP, SVG, EMF, ICO from the project graphics library).
• Basic shape objects: rectangle, ellipse, line, polygon, polyline, text field, graphic view.
• I/O fields with tag binding (single PLC tag or HMI tag binding).
• Symbolic I/O fields and text lists.
• Gauges and bar graphs (basic, not the "extended" variants).
• Alarm classes, alarm groups, and discrete alarm texts (the runtime behavior differs slightly; see Section 6).

4.2 Objects that copy but require manual rework

• Buttons: Only the Click and Activate events survive the round-trip. All other event handlers (Press, Release, Disable, etc.) are dropped. The engineer must re-bind each missing event after paste.
• Trend views: The Comfort "trend view" control does not exist in Professional. The corresponding Professional control is WinCC OnlineTrendControl. The data source bindings must be re-created.
• Date/Time fields: The data type Date_Time from the Comfort model is converted to DateTime on the Professional side. Any direct comparison or arithmetic on these values must be reviewed, because the internal representation and range differ.
• Screen window navigation: The "screen management" object and the navigation logic that drives it cannot be migrated. Each ScreenWindow on the Professional side must be reconfigured by hand.

4.3 Objects that do not migrate at all

• Project-wide scripts that depend on the panel file system (e.g., SMART_FILE access, /tmp paths, or any reference to the panel's internal storage).
• Functions that call panel-specific system functions, such as SetDeviceMode or GetBrightness.
• Recipes stored in CSV mode with panel-relative paths.
• User-defined controls (UDCs) created with the Comfort UDC editor; these must be re-authored under the Professional UDC editor, which uses a different inheritance model.

5. Step-by-Step Migration Procedure

The recommended procedure has been validated on TIA Portal V13 SP1 with a TP-1200 Comfort source project and a WinCC Professional Runtime target.

1. Open the project in TIA Portal V13 SP1. If the project was last saved in V13 RTM, accept the upgrade prompt and let the project complete the conversion.
2. Add a PC station in the project tree if one is not already present. Assign the WinCC Runtime Professional configuration.
3. Duplicate the PLC HMI connection. The HMI connection that exists on the TP-700/TP-1500 Comfort stations must be re-created on the PC station, with the same connection name, partner IP, and rack/slot. The Professional runtime will not display data on a screen that references a connection that does not exist on its own station.
4. Copy tag tables. Right-click the source Comfort HMI tags folder, choose Copy, navigate to the PC station's HMI tags, and Paste. Verify that every tag has retained its PLC address pointer.
5. Copy screens individually. In the project tree, right-click the Comfort screen under HMI > Screens and select Copy. Right-click the PC station's Screens folder and select Paste. Repeat for each screen.
6. Validate screen names. The Professional runtime rejects screen names containing any of the following characters: < > : " / \ | ? *, as well as leading numeric characters. Rename any offending screen on the Professional side; do not modify the source Comfort screen name, because this would force a recompile of the Comfort firmware and is unnecessary.
7. Re-bind missing button events. Open each imported screen in the Professional editor and inspect every button. Re-add the events that did not survive migration (typically anything that is not Click or Activate).
8. Replace trend views. Delete each Comfort trend view, drop a WinCC OnlineTrendControl on the screen at the same coordinates, and re-bind the data source to the corresponding tag.
9. Re-author screen management. If the Comfort project used a screen management object, re-implement the navigation logic in the Professional screen tree using the Professional ScreenWindow control.
10. Compile the PC station only. From the project tree, right-click the PC station and choose Compile > Software (rebuild all). Check the inspector window for warnings of the form "object X on screen Y was generated with reduced properties" — every such warning identifies a migration artifact that must be addressed before runtime.
11. Configure the runtime start screen. On the PC station, open Runtime Settings > General, and explicitly set the Start screen property to the renamed Professional screen. If this property still references the original Comfort screen name (which has been renamed), the runtime will open a blank screen and log "Start screen not found" only in the diagnostic log file, not in the user interface.
12. Download the PC station. Use the Online > Download to Device menu, selecting the PC station's Ethernet interface as the target. The WinCC Runtime will restart automatically once the download completes.

6. Post-Migration Corrections Detail

6.1 DateTime Handling

The Comfort Date_Time type is a 4-byte packed BCD structure. The Professional DateTime type is an 8-byte Windows DATE value (double-precision IEEE float, days since 1899-12-30). Direct VBS arithmetic that worked on the panel will produce off-by-one-day results on the SCADA side if the values cross midnight UTC. Audit every CDate, DateAdd, and DateDiff call in your VBS code.

6.2 VBS File-System and COM Access

Comfort panels run Windows CE with a sandboxed file system. Code such as:

Dim fso, ts
Set fso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
Set ts = fso.OpenTextFile("\Storage Card\CSV\recipe.csv", 1)
...

...will throw ActiveX component can't create object on a clean Windows 10 PC running WinCC Runtime Professional, because Scripting.FileSystemObject is blocked by default on hardened Windows installations. Replace this with the Professional equivalent:

Dim fso, ts
Set fso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
Set ts = fso.OpenTextFile("C:\Recipes\recipe.csv", 1)
...

Verify that the target directory exists and that the WinCC Runtime service account has read/write permission on it.

6.3 Alarm Migration

Alarm classes migrate, but the runtime display of acknowledged alarms differs. In WinCC Professional, an alarm acknowledged on one client is not automatically acknowledged on other clients unless you are running a distributed server/client topology with the central alarm server role enabled. Validate the alarm acknowledgment flow end-to-end before commissioning.

6.4 User Administration

User groups and passwords are stored in a different location on the Professional runtime. The Comfort-side user administration is not migrated. Recreate the user database on the PC station, and configure the SIMATIC Logon service if the project requires single sign-on across panels and SCADA.

7. Verification Procedure

After the migration steps, perform the following checks in order. Each check is independent; do not skip any.

1. Compile clean. Right-click the PC station → Compile → Software (rebuild all). The result must show zero errors and zero "object generated with reduced properties" warnings. Any warning of that form is a runtime failure waiting to happen.
2. PLCSIM or hardware loopback test. Connect the PC station to either a SIMATIC S7-PLCSIM instance or to the real PLC, and verify that every tag updates on a live screen. A common silent failure is a screen that renders but has no data because the HMI connection's connection name does not match the connection referenced inside the screen object.
3. Start screen check. From the engineering station, use Online → Start Runtime. The configured start screen must render within 3-5 seconds (typical for a 1920x1080 PC runtime). If a blank screen appears, open the WinCC Explorer diagnostic log (default path: C:\ProgramData\Siemens\Automation\WinCCProfessional\<ProjectName>\Logs) and search for "Start screen" or "Screen X not found".
4. Event smoke test. Click every button on every imported screen. Any button that does not respond identifies a dropped event that did not survive migration.
5. Trend test. Open at least one screen containing a trend view (now a WinCC OnlineTrendControl) and verify that the trend updates with the tag value over a 60-second window.
6. VBS log test. Trigger every VBS script on every screen. Check the Windows Event Viewer under Application for entries with source "WinCC Runtime Professional" indicating a VBS exception.
7. Alarm test. Force-trigger at least one alarm per class and verify that it appears, can be acknowledged, and clears correctly.

8. Troubleshooting Matrix

9. When to Build the SCADA Screens From Scratch

If the project contains more than a handful of buttons per screen, more than three trend views, or any non-trivial VBS logic, the engineering time spent correcting migrated objects frequently exceeds the time required to re-author the screens. The decision rule used in field projects is:

• If the project has <5 screens, no trends, and no VBS — migrate via copy/paste and correct.
• If the project has 5-20 screens, no trends, modest VBS — migrate via a shared project library (graphics, tag tables, alarm classes), re-author screens in Professional.
• If the project has >20 screens, any trend views, or any non-trivial VBS — re-author SCADA screens from scratch in Professional, reusing only the tag table and graphics library.

The shared project library approach is the highest-leverage compromise: it preserves the engineering investment in tag naming conventions, alarm texts, and graphic assets, while avoiding the hidden time cost of repairing partial object migration.

10. Reference: Useful Siemens Documentation

The official TIA Portal V13 and WinCC Professional documentation set is published on the Siemens Industry Online Support portal. When diagnosing object-model mismatches, always cross-check the relevant product manual before applying the corrective actions in this article.

• SIMATIC WinCC Professional V13 - System Manual
• SIMATIC WinCC Comfort/Advanced V13 - System Manual
• SIMATIC TIA Portal V13 SP1 - Release Notes
• WinCC V13 SP1 - What's new in TIA Portal