HOWTO: Get rid of a Visual Studio add-in

Author:	Carlos J. Quintero (Microsoft MVP)	Applies to:	Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2002
Date:	February 2006		Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003
			Microsoft Visual Studio 2005

Introduction

This article describes how to get rid of a Visual Studio add-in which was not uninstalled properly (or no uninstalled was provided).

More Information

To manually remove a Visual Studio add-in from your system, you must follow these steps:

• Locate the folder of the add-in.
• To remove it from the Add-In Manager:

  - If the add-in uses COM registration (any Visual Studio version), using RegEdit.exe delete the registry key:
  
  HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\<version>\Addins\<addin>
  
  or
  
  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\<version>\Addins\<addin>
  
  where <version> is:
  
  7.0 for Visual Studio .NET 2002
  7.1 for Visual Studio .NET 2003
  8.0 for for Visual Studio 2005
  
  - If the add-in uses XML registration (only some add-ins for Visual Studio 2005), locate and delete its .AddIn file in any of the folder listed in the "Tools", "Options" menu, "Environment", "Add-In / Macros security" section.
  

• To remove the COM registration for add-ins using it, open a Visual Studio Command Prompt, change to the folder of the add-in dll and type:
  
  regasm.exe /unregister <addin.dll>
• To remove the commands of the add-in:
  
  - Using Visual Studio 2005, open a a Visual Studio Command Prompt and type:
  
  devenv.exe /resetaddin <Namespace.Class>
  
  where <NameSpace.Class> is the namespace and class of the add-in, typically in the form MyAddInName.Connect. You can guess this name going to the "Tools", "Customize..." menu, "Keyboard" button and searching the list of commands, since all the commands of the add-in start with "Namespace.Class".
  
  - Using any Visual Studio version, you can go to the "Tools", "Customize..." menu, "Commands" tab, "Add-Ins" section, and drag the command(s) of the add-in over some toolbar. Once you have closed the dialog, if you click on the button created from a command on the toolbar, you get an error dialog from Visual Studio because the add-in for that command is no longer available, and offering you the chance of deleting the command.
• Finally you can delete the add-in files from the installation folder. Don't forget to delete also the add-in assemblies installed in the Global Assembly Cache (GAC), if any.

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