Convert VDProj to WiX setup projects in
Visual Studio 2019 - 2010

VDProj to WiX Converter
for Microsoft® Visual Studio®

This product is discontinued and no longer available for sale. This page is only available for reference.

Supported

  • Visual Studio 2019
  • Visual Studio 2017
  • Visual Studio 2015
  • Visual Studio 2013
  • Visual Studio 2012
  • Visual Studio 2010

Required

  • WiX 3.6 or higher

VDProj to WiX Converter is a Visual Studio extension that generates WiX-based setup projects from your existing Visual Studio setup projects (aka vdproj). It supports all Visual Studio versions starting from VS 2010 and all vdproj features including variables, msm and msi packages, custom actions, built-in dialogs, etc.

Is VDProj outdated?

Beginning with Visual Studio 2005, vdproj has been used as the basic deployment solution. Unlike ClickOnce that emerged later, it is vdproj that for a long time remained the technology of choice for deploying various solution types. Despite the fact that such projects are innumerable in this world, and you are likely to find a couple of dozens on your own machine, Microsoft declared vdproj deprecated and unsupported in VS 2012. And if you try to open a solution with a vdproj setup, Visual Studio 2015 or 2019 will throw this message "Unsupported: this version of Visual Studio does not have the following project types installed or does not support them."

Convert your VDProj to a WiX setup in one click

Right after installation, the VDProj to WiX Converter lets you switch from VDProj to WiX (Windows Installer XML). Just open your solution with a Visual Studio setup project, right click it and choose "Convert to WiX project". A new WiX-based setup project will be automatically added to your solution.

All features of Visual Studio setups are supported

The VDProj to WiX Converter supports all project types and all features of Visual Studio and WiX setup projects:

  • Exe setup bundles
  • Msi installation packages
  • Msm merge modules
  • Web setup projects
  • Built-in variables
  • Search variables
  • Custom actions
  • Built-in dialog boxes

All WiX features in focus

Initially, the VDProj to WiX Converter was developed to support our customers who moved their existing Add-in Express based projects to a newer version of Visual Studio. All .vdproj setups that you used for deploying your Office add-in solutions can be changed to .wixproj using this Converter.

Currently, the Converter fully supports all WiX features including custom setup projects, web deployment projects, merge modules, Windows and COM+ services and all built-in dialogs. See the complete list of supported WiX options.

System requirements

  • Visual Studio 2010 with WiX 3.6+ installed
  • Visual Studio 2012 with WiX 3.6+ installed
  • Visual Studio 2013 with WiX 3.6+ installed
  • Visual Studio 2015 with WiX 3.10+ installed
  • Visual Studio 2017 with WiX 3.11+ installed
  • Visual Studio 2019 with WiX 3.11+ installed
  • Visual Studio Express Edition is not supported

Our customer says

This will save us a great amount of time!

Scott Graunke, Sterling Computer Systems