Visual Studio 2010 (beta 2) solution in Visual Studio 2008

Question

Is there a way to open a solution-file saved in Visual studio 2010 beta 2 in Visual studio 2008? ... or maybe a way to convert it?

When i tried to open it in VS 2008 i get an error saying "The selected file is a solution file, but was created by a newer version of this application and cannot be opened."

Answer 1

If you open up the .csproj file in a text editor (it's just XML) you'll see a line like:

<ProductVersion>9.0.30729</ProductVersion>

(this is from a VS 2008 project)

The first line of a 2008 .sln file reads as follows:

Microsoft Visual Studio Solution File, Format Version 10.00

The 2010 version numbers will be different - just change them to these values (or the ones you get from creating a new 2008 project on your system).

Just take a backup of the files first.

Answer 2

It is not a supported scenario to open a .sln file created with 2010 in 2008. This is true for trying to open any .sln file saved in a newer version of Visual Studio with an older one.

What you can do is open up the .sln file in notepad and decrement the version number by 1. This will allow you to open the .sln file but the operation will still likely fail as you'll have to convert all of the projects as well.