How to get TypeScript working with Visual Studio 2013 How to get TypeScript working with Visual Studio 2013 typescript typescript

How to get TypeScript working with Visual Studio 2013


I found a question on here with an answer that almost worked. But after changing some things around I was able to get this working. These steps slightly deviate from the original, which can be found here.

  1. Close Visual Studio.
  2. Install Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2012 Update 3 x86 version (even if running on an x64 platform; tsc.exe is an x86 application).
  3. Download TypeScript for Visual Studio 2012 version 0.9.0.1
  4. Uncompress/Extract the MSI file to a temporary location using https://code.google.com/p/lessmsi/
  5. Copy the directory SourceDir\Microsoft SDKs\TypeScriptto %ProgramFiles(x86)%\Microsoft SDKs
  6. Copy the directory SourceDir\VS11_EXTENSIONS_DIR\TypeScriptto %ProgramFiles(x86)%\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\Common7\IDE\Extensions\Microsoft
  7. Copy the the two files in the SourceDir\VS11 folder (file.ts, newtypescriptfileitems.vsdir)to %ProgramFiles(x86)%\\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\Common7\IDE\NewFileItems
  8. Copy the folder SourceDir\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v12.0\TypeScript to%ProgramFiles(x86)%\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v12.0
  9. Modify your path environment variable to include %ProgramFiles(x86)%\Microsoft SDKs\TypeScript
  10. Start visual studio.

These exact steps led to me being able to work with full TypeScript support in Visual Studio 2013 Preview and Visual Studio 2013 Express for Web. A big thanks goes to the dude who posted this answer.


I searched for the version from step 3 of Spike's answer, which is apparently only any executable now. That lead me to MS's download of a slightly newer version at:

TypeScript Download

Once that was downloaded, I ran it and it offered to Repair or Uninstall TypeScript for VS 2012 and VS 2013. (I already had VS 2013 and 2013 Web Essentials installed but a project that uses TypeScript wouldn't load for me.)

Once the Repair was completed, then the project with TypeScript loaded just fine. So it might be worth it to just try repairing the install of TypeScript.