How to: Share Templates Across a Development Team

In a team development environment, it can be useful to have each developer using the same custom project and project item templates. By default, Visual Studio looks for custom project and item templates in the following location:

[Documents folder]\Visual Studio [version number]\Templates\

Instead of giving each developer a copy of the appropriate template .zip files, you can keep the .zip files in a central location, such as a network share, and have each developer configure Visual Studio to look for templates in that network share.

Note

To avoid confusion in the New Project and Add New Item dialog boxes, do not configure Visual Studio to use the same folder for both project and item templates.

To change the location where Visual Studio looks for custom templates

  1. From the Tools menu, choose Options.

  2. Select Projects and Solutions and then choose General.

  3. In User project templates location, enter a network share or click Browse to navigate to a network share.

  4. In Visual Studio user item templates location, enter a network share or click Browse to navigate to a network share.

  5. Click OK.

See Also

Reference

General, Projects and Solutions, Options Dialog Box

Other Resources

Finding and Sharing Project and Item Templates

Creating Project and Item Templates