How do I build a VS 2013 project in VS 2019?

Question

_{Tuesday, December 17, 2019 2:24 PM}

Hi! I have a project built using VS 2013 but, now I want to use it in VS 2019...Is it possible to do so?

If yes, how?

All replies (3)

_{Wednesday, December 18, 2019 12:12 AM}

The project formats tend to be the same so you should normally be able to just open it in Visual Studio 2019.

But yes, this is a general answer for a general question. Since you never mentioned anything specific, like what project type you are using, any extensions you are using and so on. For the project types that are built into Visual Studio though, it is the intention that all you have to do is open the solution in Visual Studio 2019 and it should take care of anything it needs to do to run it in the new version.

This is a signature. Any samples given are not meant to have error checking or show best practices. They are meant to just illustrate a point. I may also give inefficient code or introduce some problems to discourage copy/paste coding. This is because the major point of my posts is to aid in the learning process.

_{Wednesday, December 18, 2019 6:10 AM}

Hi NishitP,

Welcome to MSDN forum.

Just like Darran said above, you could open your project which was built with VS 2013, in VS 2019.

But please note:

#1. Each new version of Visual Studio supports most types of projects, files, and other assets. You can work with them as you always have, provided that you don’t depend on newer features.

#2. Support for some project types changes over time. A newer version of Visual Studio might not support certain projects at all, or it might require that you update a project so that it’s no longer backwards-compatible.

Please also check this document: Project migration and upgrade reference for Visual Studio.

Hope this could help you and any feedback will be expected.

Best Regards,

Tianyu

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].

_{Wednesday, December 25, 2019 10:30 AM}

Hi NishitP,

Did you have any update for this issue?

In general, the higher version of VS project will be compatible with the lower version of the project. You can refer to the document as Tianyu said. Besides, for .Net projects, the higher version of VS contains the old framework version like v3.5 or v4.5. And if it's the code, VS will update it automatically.

For some  c++ projects,  when you migrate to VS2019, if you encounter any errors, you can change

the toolset to v120 by Right-click on the project-->Properties-->Configuration Properties-->General-->Platform Toolset to v120. So VS2019 can build vs2013 projects without any errors.

Look forward to hearing from you.

Best Regards,

Perry

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]