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Launching Tools from Visual Studio

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You can add items to the Tools menu that allow you to launch external tools from within Visual Studio. For example, you can add an item to the Tools menu to launch utilities such as OLE View or WinDiff.

To learn more about See
Passing variables to external tools when they are launched Passing Arguments to External Tools
Providing key bindings and accelerator keys for external tools Adding Accelerator Keys and Key Bindings Anchor
Pre-defined arguments for external tools Arguments for External Tools

To add an external tool to the Tools menu

  1. On the Tools menu, choose External Tools.

  2. In the External Tools dialog box, choose Add, and enter a name for the menu option in the Title box.

  3. In the Command box, enter the path to the file you intend to launch, or choose Browse to navigate to the file. Files types that you can launch include .exe, .bat, .com, .cmd, and .pif.

    Note   If the file resides on the system path, you can enter just the file name. If not, enter the full path to the file.

  4. Select Use output window and Close on exit, as appropriate, and then choose OK.

    Note   The Use output window option is only available for .bat and .com files.

After you have added a tool to the Tools menu, you can easily launch the tool.

To launch a tool from within Visual Studio

  1. On the Tools menu, choose the custom menu option you created for the external tool.

  2. If prompted, enter any additional arguments in the Arguments dialog box.

    Note   If you did not select Prompt for arguments in the External Tools dialog box, you will not need to enter any additional information before the tool launches.

See Also

Passing Arguments to External Tools | Adding Accelerator Keys and Key Bindings Anchor | Arguments for External Tools