VB Powerpack Archives - bits and bytes

[Update: This article is relevant for Visual Studio 2019/2017/Others as well]

Where’s the Visual Studio 2013 Visual Basic PowerPack?

Note the VisualBasic PowerPack is not part of Visual Studio 2013 install, it comes as separate MSI. The download link for Visual Basic Powerpack for Visual Studio 2013 is hard to find online as well. I found the link from our internal support article.

Download VB Powerpack (direct link to bits): http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=321343

Steps to Install Visual Studio 2013 Visual Basic PowerPack

Installing Visual Basic Powerpacks

Please close any open instances of Visual Studio 2013. Once the installation completes and if you still don’t see the Powerpack controls in the toolbox. Do the following.

Open Visual Studio 2013
Open the toolbox. Add a new tab, right click on the toolbox, select “Add Tab”. Name the tab to “Visual Basic PowerPack”
Expand the new “Tab”. Right click in the empty space under the new tab and select “Choose Item”. You’ll see the following dialog popup…
Adding reference to Visual Basic powerpack
Please give it few minutes to load all items. Please select “.Net Framework Components” tab if its not already selected.
In the filter text box control please type in “Power”. You should see something like this in the above dialog…
Choose toolbox items
Check the relevant ones and add them to your toolbox as shown below…
Adding filter for powerpack in the Choose toolbox items dialog
Once you click ok, you should see the following controls added to your toolbox…
PowerPack controls listed in VS toolbox
In my case I’ve added all powerpack controls to my toolbox.
You might also have to add a reference to this new powerpack library if you still see compilation errors. Be aware that the assembly name has changed as well…
Adding reference to new powerpack library