It's a bug in the Visual Studio settings migration feature, the window layouts are actually directly compatible between VS2010/VS2012/VS2013. The solution is actually really easy: Manually export just the window layout from VS2010, change the version number in the file, then import it into VS2013, and it'll work.
For the step by step solution to this problem, do the following:
- Open Visual Studio 2010
- From the main menu, select "Tools->Import and Export Settings"
- Select "Export selected environment settings" and press "Next"
- Select only the "General Settings->Window Layouts" option from the settings tree, and press "Next"
- Name the file how you want and select "Finish"
- Open the exported settings file in a text editor, and change the second line from this:
<ApplicationIdentity version="10.0"/>
To this:<ApplicationIdentity version="12.0"/>
Or set the version string to 11.0 for Visual Studio 2012. - Open Visual Studio 2013
- From the main menu, select "Tools->Import and Export Settings"
- Select "Import selected environment settings" and press "Next"
- Save your current settings if desired, and press "Next"
- Select "Browse" and locate the modified settings file, then press "Next"
- Press "Finish"
I came across this question while searching for a solution myself. I couldn't find an answer anywhere, so hopefully this will help anyone else who comes across this problem.
EDIT: I've now seen a case with a colleague where there was something in his window layout settings that wasn't directly compatible with Visual Studio 2012, so this solution failed for him. If you get errors migrating your window layout, I'd suggest resorting to "slicing and dicing" the window layout to narrow down which part(s) are causing the error.