CODEWITHSUNDEEP
visual-studio-2012visual-studio-2013
Alex Essilfie
Alex Essilfie

Reputation: 12613

Does VS2012 Documentation work with VS2013?

I recently decided to try out VS2013 before making the jump from VS2010 and I found that I have to download the help files too. After searching online, it appears there is no ISO of the VS2013 documentation. I rather found documentation for VS2012 and this VS Help Downloader.

What I would like to know is:

Does Visual Studio 2013 use the same documentation as Visual Studio 2012?

I need to be sure of this before I commence downloading the fairly large VS2012 Documentation ISO on my slow internet connection.

Upvotes: 2

Views: 1283

Answers (2)

Ashish Anand
Ashish Anand

Reputation: 11

I have not used VS 2012. i m using VS 2013. after hectic search i found the following link for documentation from microsoft.com for VS 2012 and VS 2013. whatever your choice you can go for it

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=34794

Upvotes: 1

wilson0x4d
wilson0x4d

Reputation: 8749

The short answer is "yes", any VS2012 Help Viewer Content you have downloaded/installed will be used by the VS2013 Help Viewer. Additionally, when you use VS2013's Help Viewer to install help from online you may notice that only VS2012 help is (currently) available (there is no VS2013-specific Help Viewer content, yet.)

By default VS2013 uses MSDN Online, which is a change from prior VS versions (which relied on a local Help and/or MSDN installation.) This is why the VS2013 installation behaves differently and does not prompt for your Help preferences when installation finishes.

If you just want to download for offline use rather than constantly load content from online, from VS2013 navigate to Main Menu -> Help > Set Help Preference -> Launch in Help Viewer, this should prompt you to download the documentation if not already installed. You can also use the downloader built into the latest Help Viewer to download any content you're missing.

If you want to download help once and store it for later such as for multiple installations, limited/paid-for bandwidth, etc then you can consider using the Visual Studio 2012/2013 Help Downloader (an open-source project on CodePlex.) This allows you to download the content files and then import them into any installation of Help Viewer.

Upvotes: 3

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