Walkthrough: Creating a Custom Editor

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Note

This article applies to Visual Studio 2015. If you're looking for the latest Visual Studio documentation, see Visual Studio documentation. We recommend upgrading to the latest version of Visual Studio. Download it here

The VSPackage project template can create a simple custom editor in C++. The VSPackage project template no longer supports C# or Visual Basic projects. For more information, see Visual Studio SDK.

Prerequisites

To follow this walkthrough, you must install the Visual Studio SDK. For more information, see Installing the Visual Studio SDK.

The Visual Studio Package Project Template

The Visual Studio Package project template can be found in the New Project dialog in the C++ Extensibility folder

To create a VSPackage using the Visual Studio Package template

  1. Create a project with the Visual Studio Package template.

  2. Select the Custom Editor option and click Next. The Editor Options page is displayed.

  3. Type the name of your editor in the Editor Name box. Type the file extension that you want to be associated with your editor in the File Extension box. Your editor is available for files with this extension. The file extension is registered for Visual Studio only, not for Windows. Type the default file name for new documents created with your editor in the Default File Name box.

  4. Click Finish to create your VSPackage in the folder that you specified.

To test your custom editor

  1. On the File menu, point to New and then click File.

  2. In the Installed Templates pane of the New File dialog box, select the file template, then the file type you just registered.

  3. Click Open to view and edit the document.

    The editor supports cut-and-paste, find-and-replace, and open-and-load operations.

See Also

VSPackages