Visual Studio Express 2017

Article
2017-03-09

Question

_{Thursday, March 9, 2017 11:46 AM | 6 votes}

Is there going to be a Visual Studio Express 2017? I can't find it anywhere to download. If not, is C# 7 supported in Visual Studio 2015 Express?

All replies (33)

_{Sunday, March 12, 2017 2:57 AM ✅Answered}

Hi akisp,

Welcome to the MSDN forum.

Sorry for the later reply and for your first question, I confirmed the express download page and it recommends downloading VS community 2017 and it not mentions the express 2017 version is will be release or not. Meanwhile, I found some other community members already reported it in this and Nicole Brunk [MSFT]: I’d love to understand your development needs so we can capture any feedback you have about our current offerings. If you’d be willing to talk with our team, please reach out to me at [email protected] any time. Thanks! Please try to consult with Nicole Brunk [MSFT] and you will get an official confirmation information for your first question, thank you for your understanding.

For you second question about C# 7.0, as far as I know, it should not available in VS 2015 express version, please have a look at this: New C# 7.0 features in Visual Studio “15” Preview 4 and the C# 7.0 is in VS “15” Preview 4 which is a higher version than VS 2015 and VS 2015 express is released on 7/29/2015.

Best regards,

Sara

MSDN Community Support
Please remember to click "Mark as Answer" the responses that resolved your issue, and to click "Unmark as Answer" if not. This can be beneficial to other community members reading this thread. If you have any compliments or complaints to MSDN Support, feel free to contact [email protected].

_{Thursday, March 9, 2017 12:18 PM | 1 vote}

Yes but since 2013 is Express named Community.

(It is in fact almost the full version)

https://www.visualstudio.com/downloads/

Success
Cor

_{Thursday, March 9, 2017 12:46 PM | 6 votes}

Yes but since 2013 is Express named Community.

(It is in fact almost the full version)

https://www.visualstudio.com/downloads/

Success
Cor

This is not correct. There are Express editions for 2013 and 2015. There are fundamental differences in the license agreements between Express and Community. This is why I am asking if it has been discontinued for 2017

_{Thursday, March 9, 2017 3:55 PM}

Microsoft hasn't announced Visual Studio 2017 Express editions and in all likelihood it won't be announced.

The Visual Studio Community Edition of VS 2015 and VS 2017 is much better than the Express editions:

- It is basically the same than the Professional edition (except some minor details such as lack of CodeLens)

- It allows extensions (that Express editions didn't)

- It can be used even to develop commercial products by individuals and by up to 5 users of non-enterprise organizations (meaning those with ≤250 PCs and ≤$1 Million US Dollars in annual revenue). See my post: Licensing the Visual Studio family of products (or using them for free)

Is there any reason that prevents you using the Community edition?

My portal and blog about VSX: http://www.visualstudioextensibility.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/VSExtensibility\ MZ-Tools productivity extension for Visual Studio: https://www.mztools.com

_{Thursday, March 9, 2017 7:15 PM | 5 votes}

For me, I am a server administrator at a large corporation. I build small applications to help me manage servers and server related infrastructure. Since I am not building "for myself", for education purposes, or as open source, I cannot use the Community Edition. As I am not a "developer" there is no way I can justify my boss spending money on the full professional/enterprise edition for me just to build the little apps I use. The Express version is the only version that is licensed for my needs. I try to use PowerShell as much as possible, but there are times when VB is needed.

_{Thursday, March 9, 2017 7:54 PM | 3 votes}

Microsoft hasn't announced Visual Studio 2017 Express editions and in all likelihood it won't be announced.

The Visual Studio Community Edition of VS 2015 and VS 2017 is much better than the Express editions:

- It is basically the same than the Professional edition (except some minor details such as lack of CodeLens)

- It allows extensions (that Express editions didn't)

- It can be used even to develop commercial products by individuals and by up to 5 users of non-enterprise organizations (meaning those with ≤250 PCs and ≤$1 Million US Dollars in annual revenue). See my post: Licensing the Visual Studio family of products (or using them for free)

Is there any reason that prevents you using the Community edition?

My portal and blog about VSX: http://www.visualstudioextensibility.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/VSExtensibility\ MZ-Tools productivity extension for Visual Studio: https://www.mztools.com

I use VS 2017 Professional myself. I work for a company that falls into the enterprise classification as defined in the VS Community license. We have 2 licenses for Professional for myself and another developer. But we also have a team of about 10 developers who from time to time need to make small changes in the code we maintain. Up until now they were using Visual Studio Express for that purpose. This is why I asked the question. They can keep using the 2015 version if Express will be discontinued but I want to start using C# 7 features and I don't know if C# 7 is supported in VS 2015 Express. That was the second part of my question.

_{Thursday, March 9, 2017 7:55 PM | 3 votes}

Well, it seems that I was wrong and "Visual Studio 2017 Express will be available soon. Right now, if you want to download Express, you can download Visual Studio 2015."

Source:

https://www.visualstudio.com/vs/visual-studio-express/

_{Thursday, March 9, 2017 8:01 PM}

See my another answer. I was wrong and VS 2017 Express will be announced "soon".

_{Friday, March 10, 2017 10:06 AM}

See my another answer. I was wrong and VS 2017 Express will be announced "soon".

My portal and blog about VSX: http://www.visualstudioextensibility.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/VSExtensibility\ MZ-Tools productivity extension for Visual Studio: https://www.mztools.com

Thanks for your replies. But unless I'm missing something, this link doesn't indicate anywhere that Visual Studio 2017 Express will be available soon.

_{Friday, March 10, 2017 10:15 AM | 2 votes}

Believe or not, last night when I answered the section "Still want Visual Studio Express?" contained the text "Visual Studio 2017 Express will be available soon. Right now, if you want to download Express, you can download Visual Studio 2015." and now certainly it is removed.

I know that I was not dreaming because I copied the text and pasted it here.

So my first answer was correct and it seems that Microsoft won't announce Express editions after all. At least not "soon".

_{Friday, March 10, 2017 12:31 PM}

Believe or not, last night when I answered the section "Still want Visual Studio Express?" contained the text "Visual Studio 2017 Express will be available soon. Right now, if you want to download Express, you can download Visual Studio 2015." and now certainly it is removed.

I know that I was not dreaming because I copied the text and pasted it here.

So my first answer was correct and it seems that Microsoft won't announce Express editions after all. At least not "soon".

Carlos, I had to smile about this. (friendly of course)

Success
Cor

_{Friday, March 10, 2017 1:22 PM | 1 vote}

I am new to these forums so excuse me of my ignorance. Is there any chance people from Microsoft are actually reading here and we get an official response? Or should I try other channels? I appreciate all the replies but it's not yet clear whether the unavailability of 2017 Express is temporary or Express versions will be discontinued entirely from the product. I need to make some development decisions and I need a definitive answer.

_{Friday, March 10, 2017 3:53 PM}

No these forums are not done by persons who have the right to say something official about Microsoft.

For that you have to contact Microsoft in your location.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/worldwide.aspx

But it is a given horse, so don't expect an other answer then: You can buy the official product. Microsoft is a business organization you know.

Success
Cor

_{Friday, March 10, 2017 6:00 PM}

Yes, the company I work for does not meet the qualifications for the Community Edition. We are a small firm, but not small enough, according to the licensing information. We use Visual Studio to build internal tools, and would like to be able to do so with the latest version.

_{Monday, March 13, 2017 10:42 AM}

Thanks Sara, that was very helpful. I emailed Nicole and asked her to clarify whether there will be an Express edition of VS 2017.

_{Tuesday, March 14, 2017 1:56 AM | 1 vote}

Hi akisp,

Thank you for your feedback.

If you get the official confirmation information from Nicole, could you please also update it in here, that will help other community members who have the same issue to know it, thanks in advance :)

Best regards,

Sara

_{Wednesday, March 15, 2017 7:49 PM | 1 vote}

Believe or not, last night when I answered the section "Still want Visual Studio Express?" contained the text "Visual Studio 2017 Express will be available soon. Right now, if you want to download Express, you can download Visual Studio 2015." and now certainly it is removed.

I know that I was not dreaming because I copied the text and pasted it here.

So my first answer was correct and it seems that Microsoft won't announce Express editions after all. At least not "soon".

My portal and blog about VSX: http://www.visualstudioextensibility.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/VSExtensibility\ MZ-Tools productivity extension for Visual Studio: https://www.mztools.com

This link confirms that the site used to say that Express would be available soon; I saw it with my own eyes before the site was changed.
https://web.archive.org/web/20170307192607/https://www.visualstudio.com/vs/visual-studio-express/

_{Tuesday, March 21, 2017 5:00 PM}

In this official MS document you can find a reference to Visual Studio 2017 Express.

https://www.visualstudio.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Visual-Studio-2017-Licensing-Whitepaper-March-2017.pdf

Please search the text for "Visual Studio Express 2017 Products"

Visual Studio Express 2017 Products

A number of free development tools are also available, including Visual Studio Express for Windows, Visual Studio Express for Web and Visual Studio Express for Windows Desktop. These tools provide a subset of the functionality available in Visual Studio Professional 2017 and are specific to writing applications targeting these platforms. Each of these Visual Studio Express products is licensed per user and subject to the use terms included with the product. Visual Studio Express can be used to build production applications

Does this mean that we should expect a 2017 Express release in future?

PS: this is the archived copy in case the original one is deleted or modified:

https://web.archive.org/web/20170321170722/https://www.visualstudio.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Visual-Studio-2017-Licensing-Whitepaper-March-2017.pdf

_{Wednesday, March 22, 2017 2:30 AM}

Hi Ste78,

Welcome to the MSND forum and thank you so much for your sharing.

From the VS 2017 whitepaper, it looks like the VS express 2017 will realease in the future. But when I research this, I found the following information that comes from here: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/visualstudio/2017/03/13/visual-studio-2017-poster/

Unni Ravindranathan - MSFT (Program Manager, Visual Studio Team)

Thanks for the note and the question. Since we originally introduced the limited Express products, we’ve significantly opened up licensing for the full product, including the introduction of a Community edition of Visual Studio. The large majority of Express users have migrated to Visual Studio Community over the last couple of years. So now that Visual Studio 2017 is here, we’re encouraging Express users to consider alternatives.

In particular, Visual Studio Community offers support for extensions, a much broader variety of workloads, and is licensed for many scenarios including individual developers, smaller companies, open source projects, and for academic use. And of course, for large corporations we have the Professional and Enterprise editions. The 2015 release of the Express products remains available for download for those who still need to use them for reasons not covered above. You can see more about the available choices here: https://www.visualstudio.com/vs/visual-studio-express/.

I would also like to talk to you to gain a deeper understanding of your reservation in using one of the currently available Visual Studio 2017 products, so please don’t hesitate to reach out at unnir at Microsoft dot com.

Best regards,

Sara

_{Wednesday, March 22, 2017 3:56 AM}

Now Microsoft came up with Community edition instead of express edition ( now community edition). Community edition included many features at free of cost you can do many things which we cant do in earlier express editions.

Download community edition

https://www.visualstudio.com/downloads/

If you wants lite weight installation as well as wants to use VS features on Mac , Linux , windows platform then you can install Visual studio code , enjoy coding

Download Visual studio Code

https://code.visualstudio.com/download

Let me know , If you have any doubts.

_{Wednesday, March 22, 2017 1:16 PM}

Hello Sara,

thanks for your reply.

Unfortunately I do not comply with the Visual Studio 2017 Community license terms, as they are stated here:

https://www.visualstudio.com/license-terms/mlt553321/

The Visual Studio Express edition would be the only suitable for me because it can be used inside an enterprise organization to build production applications.

So I am forced to stay with the 2015 release of the Express products and I will not be able to use the new features introduced in the 2017 release.

Best regards,

Stefano

_{Thursday, March 23, 2017 2:29 AM}

Hi Stefano,

Sorry for this inconvenience and thank you for your detail description, the community version have more features than the express version and the constraints are more stringent.

If I have any update of the VS express 2017 version, I will update it in here immediately, thank you for your support.

BTW, since you work at a big enterprise, may be you can think about to buy the VS professional or enterprise version, which will take a lot of benefits to your product development and management, it just my personal suggestion :)

Best regards,

Sara

_{Thursday, March 23, 2017 11:13 PM}

I can not use it even if I want to use "Community" for the same reason as "Ste78".
I would like to release "Visual Studio Express 2017".
Thank you.

Japanese

私も"Ste78"と同じ理由で"Community"を使いたくても使うことができません。
私は"Visual Studio Express 2017"のリリースを望んでいます。
よろしくお願いします。

_{Monday, April 24, 2017 1:33 PM | 2 votes}

Just for reference: especially in a big enterprise, buying software can be quite a hassle, business justifications etc, and with each new version. For groups like mine where we support Windows only for the benefit of very few developers and some ad-hoc use, the much simpler long-term solution if the Express editions go away will be to no longer support Windows at all (most likely), or at the least not compile using VisualStudio, going gcc-only even on Windows

_{Monday, September 4, 2017 7:52 AM}

Hi Sara,

While I can't comment on what the OP has to has to say about, this is what is my personal experience on the same topic.

We are a Team of 7 Developers working on some .NET applications and I have already purchased 3 licenses for Visual Studio Professional for the team, the remaining 4 devs were using the community version for development as we are not an Enterprise by the definition offered on the Microsoft website, however a particular Microsoft Reseller has been threatening us with legal action as he claims it's unlawful to use community version for commercial purposes, he has even gone to the extent of claiming that Microsoft reserves the right to claim a portion of the monies received by development using the aforementioned version.

This has put us in a bit of a quandary as we don't want to buy that many licenses just now due to budgetary reasons and at the same time, we don't to be infringing on any license agreements.

I have also been informed that we can't really get an opinion from MS directly unless we resort to some expensive consulting, frankly it seems an overkill to me, though Visual Studio is a great product, the usability query is a big question mark for small companies.

Regards,

Krylor

_{Tuesday, September 5, 2017 6:29 AM}

Hi Krylor,

Welcome to the MSDN forum.

For the VS community 2015/2017 version, please check the license terms and it describes the following:

>> (VS 2017) If you are also not an enterprise, then up to 5 of your individual users can use the software concurrently to develop and test your applications.

>> (VS 2015) For all other usage scenarios: In non-enterprise organizations up to 5 users can use Visual Studio Community. In enterprise organizations (meaning those with >250 PCs or > $1M in annual revenue) no use is permitted for employees as well as contractors beyond the open source, academic research and classroom learning environment scenarios described above.

As my understanding, your team is not an enterprise and up to 5 of your individual users can use the community version to develop and test your applications. Now you have 4 individual developer to use it and it seems meet the agreement. May by you can directly call 1-800-426-9400, Monday through Friday, 6:00 A.M. to 6:00 P.M. (Pacific Time) to speak directly to a Microsoft licensing specialist to confirm this information.

BTW, if your company is startup, you can have a look at this: Get Visual Studio Professional for Free (for Students and Small Businesses)

Best regards,

Sara

MSDN Community Support Please remember to click "Mark as Answer" the responses that resolved your issue, and to click "Unmark as Answer" if not. This can be beneficial to other community members reading this thread. If you have any compliments or complaints to MSDN Support, feel free to contact [email protected]

_{Friday, September 29, 2017 2:58 AM}

Hello,

I want to add my vote for the Express editions of Visual Studio to continue. I and others at my enterprise organization love programming and are "unofficial" programmers. We write tools and utilities for our workgroups when the opportunities arise. We do not write code every day but jump at the chance when someone mentions a need. Because we are not sanctioned, we cannot request professional licenses be purchased. We have been denied every time we ask. Because we work for an enterprise, we cannot use the Community edition.

Today, an email went out that directed employees to uninstall all versions of Visual Studio less than 2017.

Because there is no Express 2017, that is the end of our run as wannabe developers at our organization. I really wish there was an upgrade path for the Express editions.

Sincerely,
Terry

_{Friday, September 29, 2017 6:20 AM}

The lack of Express 2017 was also a disruption for me.

However, it seems to me that Visual Studio Code, as mentioned by Vithal, will be the right replacement for this situation.

There is increasing support for desktop development, like the recent, not yet documented hence experimental support for debugging desktop projects, see this issue.

With this in mind, I'm OK with their decision to let enterprises pay for Visual Studio in most cases. After all, they now develop Visual Studio Code for free.

_{Friday, September 29, 2017 2:16 PM}

Unless you can create windows forms apps in VS Code, I'm afraid it won't work for me.

_{Monday, October 16, 2017 6:27 AM}

If your "team of about 10 developers" needs to make the "small changes" by means of the windows forms designer, I agree with you. Otherwise, VS Code could become the right solution in the near future.

_{Friday, November 24, 2017 7:53 AM | 1 vote}

WOW, they decided to release the Visual Studio Express 2017 for Windows Desktop developers!

They note that this is the final express version, though.

Thank you, guys!

_{Thursday, July 26, 2018 1:33 PM}

Thanks

_{Friday, March 27, 2020 3:03 PM}

Microsoft hasn't announced Visual Studio 2017 Express editions and in all likelihood it won't be announced.

The Visual Studio Community Edition of VS 2015 and VS 2017 is much better than the Express editions:

- It is basically the same than the Professional edition (except some minor details such as lack of CodeLens)

- It allows extensions (that Express editions didn't)

- It can be used even to develop commercial products by individuals and by up to 5 users of non-enterprise organizations (meaning those with ≤250 PCs and ≤$1 Million US Dollars in annual revenue). See my post: Licensing the Visual Studio family of products (or using them for free)

Is there any reason that prevents you using the Community edition?

My portal and blog about VSX: http://www.visualstudioextensibility.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/VSExtensibility\ MZ-Tools productivity extension for Visual Studio: https://www.mztools.com

None oif the points you raise there are a case for Community being better than Express and in fact, your mentality is typical of the problem.

Why does a hobbyist developer need something as bloated as the full version of Visual Studio? The answer of course, is they don't. Do you know why Adobe invented the Elements series? Because not everyone needs the full suite of pro-functionality and the bloat that goes with it.

I am a game developer by profession, for over 35 years but at home, I am a hobbyist developer, doing things intended for free distribution. Why do I need Azure, connectivity, profiling etc...? Again, the answer is I don't and that's the segment of the userbase that the Express editions always catered for. I use a full Adobe Design Suite at home, because that's what I need but I don't need an IDE that is trying to make as many connections as it can to the internet, whilst hogging as many resources as it can get its hands on.

As a result, I now have to install Visual Studio Bloatware-Edition and then spend time uninstalling the rubbish I don't need that sits there sucking resources. But herein lies the problem, as anyone who uses current Microsoft software knows, uninstalling part of a Microsoft product doesn't leave you with a lightweight version of said product, it leaves you with an unstable buggy mess, that spends half its time scrambling to find the bits you took away and spitting its dummy out when it can't find them. Every time I run VS and open a project, at some point the whole IDE will freeze for up to 20 seconds and that's with 2015, 2017 and 2019. If I haven't saved the project, it has a greater than 50% chance of losing that project. Do you know what Microsoft said when I reported the bug? "...........", nothing, because they don't give a damn.

Microsft have spent so long pandering to the cheapskate pseudo-professional developer, who wants their tools for free, so they can maximise profits, they've forgotten how to cater for anyone else. They're the ones now driving a product that was, and in my opinion should still be, aimed at lightweight developers with free applications as their goal. Visual Studio offering any commercial potential should be a paid-for product and the Express version should have remained for those not interested in selling anything.

If you're not doing commercial level software, you don't need the commercial level tools... Express is more than adequate for a whole bunch of developers. Community is groslly bloated for those very same developers and that bloat serves no functional purpose, nor offers any benefit.

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