When developing for Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance And Operations it is important to run Visual Studio as an administrator. In this brief article, I wanted to show you a helpful tip that will save you some time.
Run As Administrator
Most people already know about this method. But I wanted to explain the steps anyway in case you are unfamilar.
The most common way to run any program as an administrator is to right click on the application and select ‘Run as administrator’.
In the case of Visual Studio, first click on the Windows Start button.
Then type ‘Visual Studio’.
Then right click on the ‘Visual Studio’ application that shows in the search results.
In the drop down menu select ‘Run as Administrator’
Setup Visual Studio To Always Run As Administrator
Instead of manually performing these steps, you can set the shortcut to always run visual studio as administrator.
Once you have Visual Studio opened, you will see the Visual Studio icon in the Taskbar at the bottom of your screen.
Right click on the icon.
When the pop-up shows, right click on the application name. In my case ‘Visual Studio 2017’.
A second pop-up will show. Select ‘Properties’.
Next, the Properties dialog form will show.
Click on the ‘Advanced’ button, under the ‘Shortcut’ tab.
In the dialog that opens, check the checkbox next to the label ‘Run as administrator’.
As the description says, “This option allows you to run this shortcut as an administrator, while protecting your computer form unauthorized activity.”
Finally, click the ‘Ok’ button on both dialog forms to close them and apply the changes.
Run Visual Studio
We can now test the changes. Click on Visual Studio in your taskbar. Or click on the Windows Start button, then type visual studio, and select the application from the search results.
If the program is running as an administrator, the text ‘(Adminstrator)’ will appear in the caption.
Setting up Visual Studio to run as administrator by default saves time.
Why Does Visual Studio Need To Run As An Administrator?
A typical user can do most things in Visual Studio. However, there are some operations that require administrator permissions. A D365 developer will need to perform some operations that need administrator permissions.
To learn more about the actions that require administrator permissions please refer to this article.
Conclusion
This is a pretty simple tip that many people already know. But for new people starting out, this tip can save you time each time you open Visual Studio. And it can save some frustration if you try to perform an operation that is not allowed without administrator permissions, and you receive an error. If this happens to you, close Visual Studio, and re-open it as an administrator.
