I recently needed to install the CRM 2013 Toolkit for Visual Studio 2013, and the Virtual Machine I was installing on didn’t have Visual Studio 2012.
As of writing this, the CRM 2013 SDK still doesn’t provide an installer for Visual Studio 2013, but there are a number of blogs that do provide each of the parts needed, and so I thought I would pull them all together in a single blog.
Note: Content used in this blog is from
Matt (sadly not sure of the second name to provide full credit) via
Hashtagcrm.com and a link provided by
Petr Abdulinhere on updating the registry with dummy settings from Visual Studio 2012
The below steps assume that you have extracted the CRM SDK to C:\CRM-SDK on the machine you want to install on.
The first step is to extract the MSI installer file and modify the VSXI Manifest file
1. Extract the contents of CrmDeveloperToolsVS12_Installer.msi
2. Open a Command Prompt
3. Navigate to the extracted SDK folder e.g. C:\CRM-SDK\sdk\Tools\DeveloperToolkit\
4. Execute the command msiexec /a C:\CRM-SDK\sdk\tools\DeveloperToolkit\sdkCrmDeveloperToolsVS12_Installer.msi /qb TARGETDIR=C:\CRM-SDK\Toolkit
5. Navigate to the folder which you extracted the files
6. Open the Visual Studio folder
7. Open the archive file Microsoft.CrmDeveloperTools.vsix, or extract it to a sensible location
8. Then we need to edit the extension.vsixmanifest, and replace - InstalledByMsi=”true” with InstalledByMsi=”false”
9. We also need to replace all instances of - Version=”[11.0,12.0)" with: Version="[11.0,12.0]“ (notice the closing bracket has been changed from ) to ] )
10. Update the manifest file in the archive or repackage the extracted directory.
The second step is to install the VSIX package
1. Double click to install the VSIX package Microsoft.CrmDeveloperTools.vsix
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2. Click install
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3. Then click close.
The third step is to copy the CRM MSBUILD folder from C:\CRM-SDK\Toolkit\CRM MSBUILD folder to C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBUILD\Microsoft\CRM
The final step is to create a registry file with the following details in :
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\VisualStudio\11.0\Setup\VS]
"ProductDir"="C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\\"
"MSMDir"="C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Common Files\\Merge Modules\\"
"VS7EnvironmentLocation"="C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\\Common7\\IDE\\devenv.exe"
"EnvironmentPath"="C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\\Common7\\IDE\\devenv.exe"
"EnvironmentDirectory"="C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\\Common7\\IDE\\"
"VS7CommonDir"="C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\\Common7\\"
"VS7CommonBinDir"=""
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\VisualStudio\11.0\Setup\VS\BuildNumber]
"1033"="12.0"
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\VisualStudio\11.0\Setup\VS\Pro]
"ProductDir"="C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\\"
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\VisualStudio\11.0\Setup\VS\VSTD]
"ProductDir"="C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\\"
Once the registry file has been created, simply double click to install it, and the CRM 2013 Toolkit for Visual Studio should now work.
Note: The registry file only needs to be created if Visual Studio 2012 is not already installed.
Note: As previously mentioned, content used in this blog is from
Matt (sadly no second name to provide full credit) via
Hashtagcrm.com and a link provided by
Petr Abdulin here on updating the registry with dummy settings from Visual Studio 2012.
May the force be with you…
@simonjen1
