Anyone had a need ( or more importantly, know how ) to move a Visual Studio Add-in from one machine to another? Of course it would be easy if I had access to the .vsix, but that's in a bit bucket somewhere. I tried poking around the registry and File Explorer, but didn't see anything likely.
Doing a Tools / Import and Export Settings got part of it - there's a placeholder on the toolbar that has the add-in's name, but none of the buttons show, and, unlike the original machine, the new machine's dropdown to Add / Remove buttons shows nothing.
First you need to find an .AddIn file that declares an add-in for Visual Studio. Usually it is located in the "c:\Users[user_name]\Documents\Visual Studio 2013\Addins\" directory, but can be in any Add-in File Paths listed in Options - Environment - Add-in Security.
In the .AddIn file there is an Assembly entry that contains a .dll name that implements the add-in.
You need to copy both files (.AddIn and .dll) to a new machine, plus optional auxiliary add-in files.
(BTW .vsix is not used to deploy add-ins.)