by Chris Green

Copy Visual Studio 2017 configuration settings to Visual Studio 2019

Visual Studio 2019
Visual Studio 2019

Visual Studio 2019 shipped on April 1st. And one of the nice things about it is you can have it installed side-by-side with other version — like Visual Studio 2017. Most developers have spent some time selecting which features of Visual Studio they need installed. A nice addition to the new Visual Studio Installer is you can export your configurations from one version and import into another. So, if you’ve just installed 2019 and wish for it to be configured like your 2017 version, now you can! And it’s pretty straight forward.

Launch the Visual Studio Installer.

Click the Modify button next to your Visual Studio 2017 installation.
This will show you the current configuration. You can just close this modal if you don’t wish to make any changes.
Click the More drop down and then select Export configuration from your 2017 installation.
Choose a location on your system where you wish to save the configuration file.
You will then see all the current settings and give you one last change to make changes. Then click the Export button.
A confirmation message will display when exporting is successful.
Next, click the More drop down for your 2019 installation then click Import configuration.
Locate your configuration file you just exported.
It will display the configuration options which will be imported giving you a chance to make any changes. Then click the Modify button to make any changes to your 2019 installation.

And that’s it! The installer will download and install any needed components based on your older configuration file.