How to Launch External Applications from Visual Studio 2005/2008

Have you thought about launching external applications from Visual Studio? Although this may look obviously simple to a few, there are many who do not know how to launch external applications like Notepad, Calculator or for that matter any executable. Here’s how to launch external applications like Notepad from Visual Studio

Open Visual Studio 2008 > Go to Tools > External Tools

Click on ‘Add’ to add a new External Tool to the list. Set the ‘Title’ to Notepad and the ‘Command’ to the notepad.exe path, which in this case is ‘C:\Windows\Notepad.exe’

Click Ok. You can now access Notepad from the Tools Menu

How do I use the External Tool feature? Well I have Solitaire linked up in my External tools. Do I have to say more :)

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About The Author

Suprotim Agarwal, ASP.NET Architecture MVP works as an Architect Consultant and provides consultancy on how to design and develop Web applications.

Suprotim is also the founder and primary contributor to DevCurry, DotNetCurry and SQLServerCurry. He has also written an EBook 51 Recipes using jQuery with ASP.NET Controls.

Follow him on twitter @suprotimagarwal