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I used Visual Studio 2010 to develop a web application. I formatted my machine and installed Visual Studio 2010 Professional. When I try to open old projects, I get an error saying:

The selected file is a solution file, but was created by a newer version of this application and cannot be opened.

I do not remember the version of visual studio 2010 I used the first time. Can anyone tell me which version came after the professional edition?

Nasreddine
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user2341596
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3 Answers3

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Open the .sln file in a text editor. In the beginning there is a marker which tells the VS version it is meant for. For VS 2010 it should look like that:

Microsoft Visual Studio Solution File, Format Version 11.00
# Visual Studio 2010

You should be able to change these values without any problems. As far as I know the file format did not change.

EDIT

Considering the comment of Dumisani: of course you need to target .net 4.0 and make sure no features of .net 4.5 are used!

toATwork
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  • Editing this line will actually work to allow VS 2010 to read solution files created/edited with VS2012; I've done this. – reinierpost Mar 04 '14 at 14:42
  • Probably not the best idea though. They are not compatible as standard for a reason. – BenM Mar 04 '14 at 14:43
  • @Rondles I did it several times for VS2012 and VS2013. So far I did not encounter any problems – toATwork Mar 04 '14 at 14:45
  • @toATwork Not saying you're guaranteed to get one, but you could end up running into an issue which could be very hard if not impossible to solve. – BenM Mar 04 '14 at 14:50
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Make sure VS2010 is updated to the latest service pack, otherwise check to see if the project was actually made in VS2012/13 in which case you will need to create a new VS2010 solution and rebuild it from your existing projects.

BenM
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Chances are you had a service pack installed that you are missing with a clean installation.

Sam
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