How to use older Visual C++ toolset in Visual Studio 2012

A lot of enhancements have been made to the IDE in Visual Studio 2012. However, not all older C++ libraries and tools from external sources will work right away with the new C++ compiler and libraries in Visual Studio 2012.

Thankfully, you can use the Visual Studio 2012 IDE but with older versions of the Visual C++ compiler and libraries! This can be used for your solutions that depend on older versions of external libraries and tools, but which do not yet work with 2012.

To do this in Visual Studio 2012, open the Properties of the project, go to Configuration Properties → General → Platform Toolset. Here switch to any older version of the toolset: Visual Studio 2010 (v100), Visual Studio 2008 (v90) or any other choice.

Tried with: Visual Studio 2010 and Visual Studio 2012