Using color themes with Visual Studio 2013 Express Editions

Microsoft has recently released Visual Studio 2013 and Matthew Johnson has released a new version of the Visual Studio 2013 Color Theme Editor. Unfortunately it doesn’t support (yet?) the Express editions of VS2013.
My previous article about using color themes with Visual Studio 2012 seemed to have been quite popular, it’s the most accessed article on my blog...  Therefore, to continue the tradition, here is how to install the new theme colors available with Matt’s extension to work with the Visual Studio 2013 Express.
1) First, download the zip file http://www.alinconstantin.net/download/VS2013Themes.zip – it contains the 8 pkgdef files defining the colors of the 8 new themes from Matt’s extension, plus the 9th pkgdef with the theme names.
Note: If you get errors when you try downloading the file, rest assured the file is still there on my home server. It’s likely a temporary problem with my Internet connection or the DNS servers, so try again later. (I’d also appreciate a warning mail if I don’t notice the problem myself and it doesn’t get resolved in 1 day)
2) Create a folder (say named “Themes”) and unpack the zip file in that folder. The location of the folder depends on the Express edition you’re using. E.g. create the folder under this path:

Express for Windows Desktop	%ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\Common7\IDE\WDExpressExtensions
Express for Windows	%ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\Common7\IDE\VSWinExpressExtensions
Express for Web	%ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\Common7\IDE\VWDExpressExtensions

Note: If running on a 64-bit machine, instead of %ProgramFiles% use %ProgramFiles(x86)% because Visual Studio is a 32-bit process.
Note 2: Visual Studio Express for Windows Phone was not released for 2013. If you need to colorize Express for Windows Phone 2012, see the Using color themes with Visual Studio 2012 Express Editions article.

3) Open a “Developer Command Prompt for VS2013”. When using Windows 8, search for “Visual Studio tools” and open the folder found. Visual Studio 2013 no longer installs the tools shortcuts directly in the Start Menu to avoid polluting the menu with 9+ rarely used shortcuts.

Anyway, once there type the command forcing VS Express to re-read the extensions settings.

Again, that depends on the version of Express used:

Express for Windows Desktop	wdexpress.exe /updateconfiguration
Express for Windows	vswinexpress.exe /updateconfiguration
Express for Web	vwdexpress.exe /updateconfiguration

4) Start VS Express  and the themes should now be available in Tools/Options/Environment/General page.

Should someone with a VS Professional/Ultimate install use Matt’s extension to create/edit a custom theme that you want to use on Express, that’s also possible. You will need a pkgdef file with the new theme, which you can get in two ways:

• On the machine with the VS install look under ‘%LocalAppData%\Microsoft\VisualStudio\12.0\Extensions’ folder. There should be some subfolders with random names, and one of them will contain a Colors.pkgdef file containing the theme of interest (open it with notepad and you should see in the beginning the theme’s name to confirm). Copy that file in the Themes folder created in step 2) above, rename it to give it a more appropriate name
• Or, you can open the theme of interest in editor, and use the Export Theme button in the window's toolbar:
   
  In the FileSave dialog, make sure to set the file type to .PkgDef (by default the extension saves the file as .VsTheme), like this: After exporting the file, copy it in the Themes folder created in step 2) above in your VS Express installation.

Now you can repeat steps 3-4) above to force VS Express read the new extension pkgdef file, and you should be able to use the new custom theme in Tools/Options dialog.