Open Visual Studio 2008 Project in Visual Studio 2005

Question

Hi all,

I have created a project using Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 2.0.

Now I want to open it in Visual Studio 2005 (.NET Framework 2.0).

When I try to open the solution in Visual Studio 2005 it is showing an error as "It is created using the Higher versions".

So is there any way I could open the project in Visual Studio 2005?

Or should I redo the entire project in Visual Studio 2005?

Please help me out!

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

See: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1439061/visual-studio-2008-and-visual-studio-2005

Answer 2

Try opening the project file instead of the solution file. Otherwise just create a new VS2005 project and add all the files and folders from the VS2008 project.

Answer 3

You can edit the solution file and project files (not recommended, but you can). If it's a csproj file, change the line

<ProductVersion>9.0.30729</ProductVersion>

to

<ProductVersion>8.0.50727</ProductVersion>

If it's the sln file, change:

Microsoft Visual Studio Solution File, Format Version 10.00

to

Microsoft Visual Studio Solution File, Format Version 9.00

Answer 4

I have just encountered the same problem. Modifying the .sln file and .csproj file by notepad is the solution. If want to know more about the file format, we can create a simple project both in VS2005 and VS2008, then compare the project files.

Answer 5

You can use Visual Studio Project Converter, a handy tool to convert between most versions of Visual Studio (VS 2002, 2003, 2005 and 2008).

But unfortunately, converting .NET projects is not supported.