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Downgrading Visual Studio Licenses User Experience

bthomas 1 Reputation point
2022-10-07T14:57:34.28+00:00

I have several users that I will be downgrading their Visual Studio Licenses from Enterprise to Professional in my environment. What will these users need to do to be compliant? Also what will their experience be?
For instance if they have VS2017 Enterprise installed will they need to uninstall that and install VS2017 Pro? Same questions for VS2019, VS2015?
Will VS2022 just handle the license change and Revert features when they login next?

What other issues may arise for these developers that I have not considered yet?

Visual Studio Setup
Visual Studio Setup
Visual Studio: A family of Microsoft suites of integrated development tools for building applications for Windows, the web and mobile devices.Setup: The procedures involved in preparing a software program or application to operate within a computer or mobile device.
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  1. Michael Taylor 51,346 Reputation points
    2022-10-07T15:52:11.017+00:00

    I don't believe it will. When they installed VS they probably installed the Enterprise edition. When VS tries to validate the license the next time (which can be a little while) then it'll determine they are running an edition they aren't licensed for and prevent them from using it. They will need to install VS Pro. Fortunately you can have both installed at the same time (although I don't know why you would) so they can install VS Pro, get it set up and then uninstall VS Ent. The downside is that the VS Installer (which installs both) won't let them have any edition of VS running while uninstalling but should be fine for installs.

    VS 2019 and VS 2017 I believe work the same way. I don't remember about VS 2015.

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