Compile C Projects in Microsoft Visual Studio

Yes, it can be done! For some reason, Microsoft doesn’t have an option to create a C project in Visual Studio. When you select File/New Project, it lets you start a C++ project but not a C one. But don’t be fooled. Visual Studio is a great IDE for creating, compiling and debugging C. If you want to know how to get started, just watch this short video…

Incidentally, one comment beneath this video on YouTube mentions that it may be necessary to set the project properties specifically to C. This will, I think, only be required if you have applied a global setting to default to C++. I’ve certainly never had to go through this additional step. However, just in case you encounter this problem, all you have to do to fix it is right-click the project node in the Solution Explorer and select Properties from the popup menu. Find the entry for C/C++ in the left-hand pane. Select the Advanced heading. Then make sure that the Compile As property is set either to Default or to Compile As C Code.