I have Visual Studio Ultimate/Enterprise installed from a previous engagement. I've now started at a new place who only have licenses form VS Professional. So I need to downgrade but the supported route involves full uninstall and full reinstall which is obviously rather time consuming.
Are there any "clever" (probably unsupported) ways to do the downgrade?
It is not possible to downgrade an installation, as they are different products and can exist side by side. The components downloaded and installed for each product are different.
If you had previously installed VS Pro, as I had, you might be able to go to "Add/Remove Programs" and select "Microsoft Visual Studio Enterprise with Updates." Modify->Uninstall worked perfectly for me. Be sure to backup any settings, as some of mine got reset. My extensions stayed the same, though. To be clear, I had VS Pro first, and I installed Enterprise Evaluation side-by-side with it.
I'm in a similar situation, unfortunately there's no supported option besides the uninstall/reinstall route you've already mentioned. You could probably save some time by backing up all your extensions and settings etc. The processes outlined below might be different for more recent versions but I think the process would be similar
Edit: This is pretty weird, I'm starting to think that perhaps Drunken Code Monkey's solution is more accurate than I initially thought. I was expecting to have to follow the same process as Schneider described (uninstall / full reinstall), but as soon as the uninstall of VS Enterprise finished, I was able to open VS Pro as normal.
Edit 2: Turns out it was not as normal, a bunch of things didn't work (creating ASP.NET MVC projects) and I had to do a repair. Not quite as bad as a full reinstall, fortunately.
Just had to do this. You must first uninstall the enterprise edition. Visual Stuido Installer will complete the uninstall and when it's finished will prompt if you'd like to install a different version, such as Community.
we can download separate professional version of Visual studio EXE. Professional and enterprise run side by side in our machine but need separate 2 license for those 2. if you want to downgrade you visual studio from Enterprise to professional just need to install EXe using below link
https://my.visualstudio.com/downloads?pid=2234.
