VSZ Files

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Visual Studio .NET uses a file type called .vsz to launch Wizards. These files are text files with a .vsz extension that Visual Studio uses to determine the Wizard to call and what information to pass to it, if any.

A .vsz file is a simplified version of an .ini format text file, except that it has no labeled sections. The first part stores information known to the Visual Studio environment, and the second section allows parameters specific to the Wizard to be collected by the environment and passed to the Wizard.

The following is an example of a sample .vsz file:

VSWizard 7.0
Wizard=VIDWizard.CBlankSiteWizard  (or a GUID in the format {<8>-<4>-<4>-<4>-<12>))
Param=<item1>
Param=<item2>

It has these parts:

  • VSWizard - This is the version number of the template file format, which for Visual Studio .NET will be "VSWizard 7.0." No other numbers are valid, and using them results in an "Invalid Format" error.
  • Wizard - This is the ProgID or alternately a string representation of the CLSID of the Wizard that should be co-created by Visual Studio.
  • Param - These parameters are optional and you can add as many as your Add-in requires. They are used to allow the .vsz file to pass additional custom parameters into the Wizard. Each value is passed as a string element in an array of variants to the Wizard.

See Also

Creating Add-Ins and Wizards | Creating an Add-In | Creating a Wizard | Visual Studio Commands | VSDir Files