Visual Studio Express with Unity

I use Visual Studio Express instead of Monodevelop, as I'm sure plenty of people do. To get Intellisense working in VS, I've been following these steps in the past:
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/how-do-i-get-intelli-sense-in-visual-studio.118475/

Not a very elegant way to do it, but it works - or at least it did until recently. For some reason, my project files are no longer showing up in new projects in Unity. So I can't open my unity-csharp.sln file. It's not that the files are hidden, they just aren't there. Is it that a new version of Unity no longer uses them? Why could this be happening? The files are there for my old projects, it's just newly created ones that are affected.

Edit:
By the way, I'm using VS Express and Windows 8. I'm downloading the new VS "Community" now.

 

If you're using the VS Community Edition, be sure to also pick up UnityVS (http://unityvs.com/). I've been using it and it's a pretty nice integration.

 

Thanks, I'll look into that for sure.

 

I second that. Don't use VS Express anymore. Microsoft has made the Community Edition free and it's so much nicer. It supports plugins so you can use Visual Studio Tools for Unity (also free) and Resharper (not free but worth it).

Edit: Here's a link for VS Community 2013: http://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/news/vs2013-community-vs.aspx

 

Thanks!
I've got VS Community and just installed the unity-vs plugin which seems to be working well.

 

Make sure you have the UnityVS package imported into your project. There should be a link in your start menu so when you have your project open use it and it'll add to your project. I've had problems with it in the newer betas so I've had to export in an older version and reimport. Then use the Visual Studio Tools menu item that gets added to the editor and generate the Visual Studio project. You'll be good to go and even able to debug from Visual Studio. The debugging from Visual Studio is awesome.

 

Yep, I got it set up already, thanks.
It was pretty easy.

 

In our company using Community edition is not allowed, only Express, but we do use Unity for research. Isn't there a way to actually use the Unity VS Tools in Express? MonoDevelop is horrible and fill with bugs, never respecting my settings and styles, nor tabs and spaces.

 

Nope... why would you use Express and not Community? Express does not support plugins.

Maybe your company has too many developers or you're contracting for larger companies so you don't meet the requirements, but in that case you should just spring for MSDN licenses and go with full blown Visual Studio. MSDN License costs have dropped over the last year.

https://www.visualstudio.com/products/how-to-buy-vs

The standalone license is only going to run $499 / dev / year and the standard subscription will be $1,199 / user / first year and $799 to upgrade.

 

you can also get longer terms through a reseller (as mentioned in the link Dustin provided).. I have a two year term for MSDN / Pro license

 

Bump since the issue is still there and Unity documentation states that there IS support of VS Express, but that doesn't seem like true:
https://docs.unity3d.com/2019.1/Documentation/Manual/Preferences.html
https://docs.unity3d.com/2019.1/Documentation/Manual/VisualStudioIntegration.html

there are mentions of VS Express, but they are just mentions, while Unity preferences don't have a selection for VS Express and selecting it by hand (Select Browse and locate .exe) doesn't seem to help, since Unity simply interprets it as a third party random editor, i can open VS solution in VS Express, compile but no way to debug anything or directly open script from Unity, i understand that most of people have migrated to Community Edition, but event MS states that they will launch VS Express 2019, so why no support from Unity?