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Has anyone managed to fix the themes on the Express version of Visual Studio 2012 for Windows Desktop? I have tried the solutions that work on the paid version, as described in another Stackoverflow question. I managed to change colors, but the Menus remain as MENU's, and the small, colorless icons still crouch in the task bar.

EDIT: Please note that what hope to see as an answer is, "Yes, I did it for the Express version, and here's how." Failing that, I could accept, "Sorry, you lose, and here's why."

EDIT 2: Microsoft says the "Blue" theme is the same as VS 2010. Perhaps I did not make it clear that we already have a partial answer. The "change colors" link shows how to perform that task without the plugin that only works with the paid version.

Community
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Jive Dadson
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  • Then you can expect no answer at all. The fact is Microsoft only provides fixes for paid editions, and even that is unofficial (by MSDN bloggers) and not supported by Microsoft product team. – Lex Li Sep 29 '12 at 04:56
  • @Lex I am hopeful that someone will come up with an answer. Maybe not from Microsoft. Mere users have already figured out how to fix everything in the paid version, and most everything in the Express version. However, the development team is openly complaining about the new look. Maybe they can get something done about it that even lowly Express users can avail themselves of. – Jive Dadson Sep 29 '12 at 05:42
  • Microsoft automatic updates fixed VC++ 2010 Express so that it uses the same expanded .vcxproj format as VC++ 2012. In fact, I frequently see fixes to VC++ 2010 show up on automatic updates. – Jive Dadson Sep 29 '12 at 05:45
  • Why the close vote? This is NOT an exact duplicate of http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9594433/how-can-i-switch-themes-in-visual-studio-2012. It is something that a lot of people are clamoring for. It will probably not be out of date for a long time. Please leave this open. – Jive Dadson Sep 29 '12 at 06:03

2 Answers2

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Yea! I found another piece of the puzzle. To get rid of the UPPERCASE MENU's in the Express version, the magic entry is key is HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\WDExpress\11.0\General. Add a DWORD named SuppressUppercaseConversion and give it a value 1. Yep, exactly like what Derek said, except for the WDExpress part. So that makes the menu headings easily readable again.

As noted in the question, Express users can get the colors back by following the instructions that Alin Constantin blogged.

Only the little gray icons remain to be repaired. Those are not too bad.

Jive Dadson
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    +1. Just started working with 2012.. On my LCD monitor, it was unusable in it's default form. Who on earth thought this was a good idea? Thanks! – Moo-Juice May 08 '13 at 17:29
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At least for the paid version, there's a registry key to address the uppercase menus

  1. Launch regedit and navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\11.0\General
  2. Create a DWORD value named SuppressUppercaseConversion with value 1.
Derek
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