Odtnhj

I'm asked to make some changes in an old C# ASP.NET Web project developed in Visual Studio. But I'm unable to successfully open the project in Visual Studio 2017. There are no database connection related errors either. The C# developer of the project is not available anymore and there is no documentation. Question: Is there any info in config file or some other file (.cssproj etc.) in a C# web project that can help determine what version of Visual Studio was used so I can try to open the project in that particular version of the Visual Studio?

Open the .sln file and at the top you will see something like this:

Microsoft Visual Studio Solution File, Format Version 12.00

 # Visual Studio 14

VisualStudioVersion = 14.0.25420.1

MinimumVisualStudioVersion = 10.0.40219.1

This means it was created in Visual Studio 14.0.25420.1 (Visual Studio 2015 Update 3) but the minimum version you can use to open it to maintain backwards compatibility is is 10.0.40219.1, which is actually Visual Studio 2010 SP1.

Look into .config, .proj file, and .sln file, those files usually have information about what framework version being targetted. And once you know the version you can simply google which Visual studio to use.

The .sln can sometimes have the information you are looking for.

For instance this is the beginning of the solution I am working with. Note, however, that everyone uses this solution in Visual Studio 2017 and JetBrains' Rider yet it still has VS 2015 floating around in it because that's what it was originally created in. EDIT: Just looked at the link @PeterB posted and this is a VS 2017 format.

Microsoft Visual Studio Solution File, Format Version 12.00
# Visual Studio 15
VisualStudioVersion = 15.0.27130.2036
MinimumVisualStudioVersion = 10.0.40219.1
Project("FAE04EC0-301F-0000-0000-00C04F79EFBC") = "ABC", "ABC.WebABC.Web.csproj", "71F88F58-85B4-0000-0000-105C954AA99E"
EndProject

The solution file can have different formats and I am pretty sure a solution created in VS 2017 will yield a slightly different structure.

For the project you may also be able to tell based on the ToolsVersion

<Project ToolsVersion="12.0" DefaultTargets="Build" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003">