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Wizards

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Applies to: yesVisual Studio noVisual Studio for Mac

Note

This article applies to Visual Studio 2017. If you're looking for the latest Visual Studio documentation, see Visual Studio documentation. We recommend upgrading to the latest version of Visual Studio. Download it here

After you create a wizard, you typically want to add it to the Visual Studio integrated development environment (IDE) so that others can use it. The added wizard then appears in the Add New Project or Add New Item dialog boxes. To see the Add New Project or Add New Item dialog boxes, right-click an open solution in Solution Explorer, point to Add, and then click New Project or New Item.

Wizards can be implemented in Visual Studio to let users select from a tree view of available values when they open the Add New Project dialog box or the Add New Item dialog box, or when they right-click an item in Solution Explorer.

In your wizard, you can provide the option of localizing the name of a new project or item, and you can determine the icon that users will see when they select the wizard. You can also control the order in which new items appear relative to other available items; items do not have to be organized alphabetically.

You can also supply a wizard that starts differently, based on custom parameters that are passed to the wizard when it is opened.

The topics in this section discuss the files that you implement to cause the Visual Studio Add New Project and Add New Item dialog boxes to list your wizard among the available wizards and templates, and the requirements that your wizard must meet to operate correctly in the IDE.

In This Section

Provides an overview of what template directory description files and explains how they function in the IDE to display folders, wizard .vsz files, and template files that are associated with a project in the dialog boxes.

Explains how the IDE starts wizards and lists the three parts of the .vsz file.

Describes the IDTWizard interface that wizards must implement to work in the IDE.

Explains how wizards are implemented and what occurs when the IDE passes Context Parameters to the implementation.

Explains how to use Custom Parameters to control the operation of the wizard after the wizard is started.

Provides links to additional topics that offer information about how to design new project types.

Describes how to use Visual Studio projects and solutions to organize code files and resource files, and how to implement source control.