Is it possible to install two different versions of Visual Studio in the same computer? [duplicate]

Question

Is it possible? or there is a compatibility issues between the two versions? Because our company is using an outdated version of visual studio (VS2005) and I wanted to try out Visual Studio 2010/2012/2013 for the purpose of learning while there is no project to do. (any of the three newer version is fine) but I don't know if it'll affect the datas of the currently installed visual studio 2005.

Can I still install a newer version without affecting the older version of visual studio?

Answer 1

Yes you can install multiple versions of Visual studio side by side.But install the lower versions first.

If you use Visual Studio 2013 to open a solution that was created in Visual Studio 2012 or Visual Studio 2010 with Service Pack 1 (SP1), you can later open and modify the solution again in the older version as long as you haven't implemented any features that are specific to Visual Studio 2013.

So take care about backward compatibility.Refer this for more info.

Answer 2

I have vs2005 2008 and 2012 running with no issue. Just don't open your 2005 projects/solutions in later versions as this will attempt to convert them to later versions which then will be no longer compatible with 2005. Visual studio will give you plenty of warnings if you do this though.