Visual COBOL PE licenses are only good for a year and then they expire. The way to renew the license is to register and download the latest version from our website here: You will then receive a new one year license.

Chris; downloaded VC PE and did a Repair (rather than an Uninstall). When I tried to open a project I got:

Unsupported
This version of Visual Studio is unable to open the following projects. The project types may not be installed or this version of Visual Studio may not support them.
For more information on enabling these project types or otherwise migrating your assets, please see the details in the "Migration Report" displayed after clicking OK.
     - MainProg, "C:\\WORKAREA\\VisCob\\MusicDB\\MainProg\\MainProg.cblproj"


Non-functional changes required
Visual Studio will automatically make non-functional changes to the following projects in order to enable them to open in Visual Studio 2015, Visual Studio 2013, Visual Studio 2012, and Visual Studio 2010 SP1. Project behavior will not be impacted.
     - MainProg, "C:\\WORKAREA\\VisCob\\MusicDB\\MainProg\\MainProg.sln"

Help please :-)

I am not really sure why you would do a repair instead of an uninstall. You should be able to uninstall the previous version of Visual COBOL PE and the License manager and then Install the new version. You might be able to just install the new version over the previous version depending on what version you were using previously.

Once it is installed you can use License Manager to install the new license and you should be all set.

My mistake Chris. As it was an extension to my previous licence I assumed a Repair eas need rather than a Uninstall/Reinstall.

Hi, were you able to resolve your issue after completing a reinstall?

I am encountering the same problem in Visual Studio 19 with my .sln - receiving an error on project files of type .cblproj indicating that the type is "not supported or needs project behaviour impacting modifications". The Migration Report says "The application which this project type is based on was not found."

I have uninstalled and reinstalled Visual COBOL 7.0 with the new license provided. Same problem.

This worked fine under VS 17 and VC 4.0. 

Any assistance would be appreciated. Thanks

Hi Ken,

If you open up the Micro Focus License Adminstration Tool and look on the Summary tab, does it show that a full license is installed or that a license has expired?

It shows full

Close Visual Studio and try the instructions in the following documentations to run the mfvsixinstall program and try again.

Installing Visual COBOL into Visual Studio (microfocus.com)

Thanks Chris, I will try that.

Worked with one of your excellent colleagues, Mark Buchanan. Ran the mfvsixinstall program, the projects were still marked as incompatible. However Mark recommended to try reloading one of the projects (<right click> Reload), which worked (i.e. the project was recognized). We then tried reloading all projects in the solution (<right click> Reload all projects), which also worked.

Note that I installed Visual Studio 2019 but did not uninstall 2017. The thinking is perhaps it became confused which version to use when opening the solution, reloading the projects may have helped it to correct that issue. Will try on another machine with only Visual Studio 2019 to confirm. 

Chris, this is not correct today and since changes in Portal since begin 2021. Now the pe edition is published in your customer portal and you must register. When you had one year license, you will never become a newer version. This is my experience, all mails on sales or support forum has bring no success/response!