Open and build am created in Visual Studio 2015 in VS2012?

Question

I have a situation where a person wants to use Visual Studio 2012 to open a solution I created in Visual Studio 2015. VS2012 seems to open the solution without complaint but it will not compile.

Should it be possible to accomplish this backward task? (Don't ask why they don't upgrade, that's another story)

When I try I get errors relating to referencing libraries and libraries not being found.

Depends. What are the compiler errors? – Wonko the Sane Dec 21 '16 at 21:25 — Wonko the Sane, Dec 21 '16 at 21:25
Mostly errors with references. – John S Dec 22 '16 at 14:05 — John S, Dec 22 '16 at 14:05

score 0 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 10:30

Your question is very vague, and you should specify the specific errors that you are getting.

However, you mention in the comments that you have "mostly errors with references". My guess is that your references are to .NET 4.6 (or later) versions of some of things you are referencing.

Gleaned from this MSDN page:

.NET Version    VS Version
    4.6            2015
    4.5            2012

You can try deleting the references that are failing, and re-adding them with an appropriate version.

Also, take a look at (and upvote, if appropriate) this other answer, specifically the answer that starts:

"Yes, though you sometimes will have to change the version (single number) in .sln file, no other differences found yet."

you can install target pack to compile 4.6.x, but he may uses C# 6 language features which could cause compile errors — magicandre1981, Dec 22 '16 at 19:04

Open and build am created in Visual Studio 2015 in VS2012?

1 Answers1