How to Add a .Dll Reference to a Project in Visual Studio

How to add a .dll reference to a project in Visual Studio

Copy the downloaded DLL file in a custom folder on your dev drive, then add the reference to your project using the Browse button in the Add Reference dialog.

Be sure that the new reference has the Copy Local = True.

The Add Reference dialog could be opened right-clicking on the References item in your project in Solution Explorer

UPDATE AFTER SOME YEARS
At the present time the best way to resolve all those problems is through the

Manage NuGet packages menu command of Visual Studio 2017/2019.

You can right click on the References node of your project and select that command. From the Browse tab search for the library you want to use in the NuGet repository, click on the item if found and then Install it. (Of course you need to have a package for that DLL and this is not guaranteed to exist)

Read about NuGet here

Adding my DLL into a Visual Studio project in C++

I don't have VS in front of me this very moment, but these should be the general steps to set it up:

Properties->Linker->Input: your.lib
Properties->Linker->Additional Library Directories: ../your/bin
Properties->General->Compiler->Additional Include Directories: ../your/include

To build your app, the DLL's API headers must be in the include for the compile-time, it's LIB files in the bin for the link-time. Once you have your app EXE, all you need is the DLL to be in the same folder as your EXE when it executes.

You might also want to add the dll project and the app project into a common solution in VS and add (right click) Project Dependency from the app to the dll. This ensures correct order of building, assuming you are going to build the dll at all.

How to add DLL reference in Visual Studio Code

You need to add a reference to any .dll files in your csTemp.csproj file as such:

  <ItemGroup>
     <Reference Include="OpenHardwareMonitorLib">
      <HintPath>**path\to\your\dll**</HintPath>
     </Reference>
  </ItemGroup>

How to add a dll file into reference of Visual Studio properly?

As described in your question, this is the way you reference a class library or any other DLL-like reference.

Once compiled, your project copies its dependencies into its bin folder where you can find the referenced DLLs.

If you can't find the referenced DLL, set its Copy Local property to true.

Another way around is to set your Reference Paths. This will force, on compile-time, your project to update itself with DLLs from the specified reference paths.

The best practice was to create a Shared folder where all referenced libraries were in, so that you could write your reference paths once and for all per project.

Technologies being so great and vast on improvements, there's now NuGet Package Manager.

What is NuGet?

A collection of tools to automate the process of downloading, installing, upgrading, configuring, and removing packages from a VS Project.

How to use NuGet?

You may install it from within Visual Studio if it is not already installed, through the Extension Manager.

Otherwise, please visit the NuGet CodePlex Home Page.

Here's how Finding and Installing a NuGet Package Using the Package Manager Console has never been easier! =)

So when you open up an existing project, NuGet manages to get all the dependencies for you without any more effort from you. This should solve your concerns.

How to add DLL reference to a c++ project in a native application?

In a native C++ project in Visual Studio in order to not copy the dlls in the folder of the executable you can right-click on the project -> properties -> Debug -> Enviroment and set the following variable: PATH=<folder where the dll is>;%PATH%

I'm not a great expert of C# but what I know is that in a .NET application, in order to use a component in your application, you need to add a reference to it. For default, the dll is locally copy and deployed with your application; to prevent this, you have to register the dll in the GAC(Global Assembly Cache).

How do I add an external dll to my VS2019 project?

So there seems to be a way to do it that involves a workaround including a .lib file. There is a similiar question asked that has been answered here:

Calling functions in a DLL from C++

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