Can you upgrade Visual Studio 2015/2017 from Professional to Enterprise?

Question

If Visual Studio 2015 (and 2017) are installed from MSDN using a Visual Studio Professional ISO, can it later be upgraded to Enterprise using a new license key? ...or does it require a complete uninstall/reinstall of Visual Studio?

Kaycekaycee

no, it will not replace existing one so you need to remove pro after having install enterprise. – Osteen

Hi SofaKng, does your issue is solved or not? If not, you can update your current issue. – Calisaya

Answer 1

You need to install the enterprise version to obtain it, and VS cannot change the version through the type of your license key and the VS version depends on your installation.

For VS 2015, we can only keep one version on the computer. If you already installed the VS professional 2015, as far as I know, you can directly install run the VS enterprise 2015 installer to install it. After the installation is complete and successful, the professional is auto removed or replaced by the higher enterprise version. You can also try to use the forcibly uninstall command like: vs_professional.exe /uninstall /force to uninstall the professional version.

For VS 2017, please check the VS 2017 Release Notes and it describes Visual Studio Enterprise and Community (among other products) can now be installed side-by-side on the same computer. To make identifying these installations simpler, you can specify a short name or "nickname".

Calisaya

I can confirm your second paragraph as I just ran the VS 2015 Enterprise installer with VS 2015 Professional already installed. It upgraded the installation in place and only took a minute or two. – Dissolve

Answer 2

Visual Studio 2015 Enterprise installer should tell you whether you need to uninstall Professional.

Visual Studio 2017 no longer has that restriction, and you can install both Professional and Enterprise side by side.

Leishmaniasis

Answer 3

If you have VS Installer you can easily change versions. Although you need to uninstall the version you have, you can use the same Installer you ran for uninstallation (i.e. VSPro) to Download & install new version (i.e. Enterprise).

Soliz