Problem: When we go on web for solution of some problem, and people on internet can provide us with the whole project or solution.  Not every developer uses the same version of Visual studio IDE.  Situation could be something like that, you are using visual studio 2010 and solution provided on web is on Visual studio 2008. In this scenario, you can easily convert solution in 2008 from 2010. But, actual problem arrises when solution is provided in Visual Studio 2012 and you have Visual Studio 2008 or 2010 on your machine. Visual studio doesn’t support backward compatibility on its solution files. It will give you an error message.

But, this problem can be easily solved with very little effort. Here is what i did to convert visual studio 2012 solution to visual studio 2008 format

1. Open solution file(.sln) file with notepad++ or your favourite text editor(notepad can also open this file).

2. Replace the following first two lines

Microsoft Visual Studio Solution File, Format Version 12.00
# Visual Studio 2012

by,

Microsoft Visual Studio Solution File, Format Version 10.00
# Visual Studio 2008

3. Save the edited file and now you can simply open visual studio 2012 solution in visual studio 2008.

4. If you need to convert from Visual Studio 2012 to Visual studio 2010, you can simply replace by the following:

Microsoft Visual Studio Solution File, Format Version 11.00
# Visual Studio 2010

Note: Csharp projects (.csproj) and VB Projects (.vbproj) are backward compatible already and can be opened by any version of visual studio.