Install the Microsoft Office Developer Tools for Visual Studio 2012 (SharePoint 2013 Projects)

Microsoft recently released the RTM version of the Microsoft Office Developer Tools for Visual Studio 2012 (read the announcement on S. Somasegar’s blog) as a step forward in their development support for SharePoint and Office 2013. In this article, I will explain how to install the final version of the tools in a CloudShare environment where Visual Studio 2012 + Preview 2 of the Office Developer Tools is installed.

Let’s start!

• First, you have to download the RTM version of the tools from this link which is a direct download of the Web Platform Installer 4.5.

• Since the Web Platform installer detects you want to install the Office Developer Tools, it first opens a window with information about the tools that you are going to install: version, download size, etc. Just click the “Install” button in this window.

• You will probably experience an installation error due to a missing prerequisite needed in order to install the tools: the Service Bus 1.0 Cumulative Update 1. Therefore, you have to close the installation process and download the prerequisite from here.

• Once you are done with the Service Bus 1.0 Cumulative Update 1, be sure to close any Visual Studio 2012 instances and restart the Office Developer tools installation process. In this case, the installation process will return an error message so the following components can be installed:
  • Microsoft Office Developer Tools for Visual Studio 2012
  • SharePoint Client Components
  • Workflow Manager Tools 1.0 for Visual Studio 2012 Core
  • Workflow Manager 1.0 Cumulative Update 1
  • Microsoft Exchange Web Services
  • Microsoft OpenXml SDK
  • Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 Tools for Office Runtime Language Pack
  • Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 Tools for Office Runtime

• The Web Platform Installer will download, configure and install all the components included in the RTM release of the Office Developer Tools.

• Once the tools are installed, a window will open showing all the components installed.

• Click “Finish” in the installation wizard, and you’ll need to restart your computer in order to be able to use the tools in Visual Studio. After this system restart, you can open Visual Studio 2012 and check out the RTM tools for creating SharePoint applications.

• And of course, you have all the templates related to SharePoint solutions ready to be used.

And that’s how to install the RTM version of the Office Developer Tools for Visual Studio 2012.