Advice from C++ boffins required

A few years ago I wrote a program in C++ to generate invoices from my employees' Outlook calendars. I'm by no means a programmer and only have very rudimentary C++ chops, but it works perfectly and I've used it every week since then. I compiled it with Visual C++ 2010. It of course runs on my system because I have Visual C++ 2010 installed. I'm in the process of transferring all of my business stuff over to my new laptop so I can use my desktop exclusively for music, and I don't particularly want to install Visual C++ 2010 on there. Can I just install the Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable on my laptop to make my executable run? Sorry if this is an obvious question, I was never that clear about the whole nuts and bolts of C++ compiling. 
 
Also, I notice that Microsoft's list of requirements for the 2010 redistributable does not include Windows 8, but that the 2013 redistributable does. Will there be a problem installing 2010 on my Windows 8 machine, or is the 2013 version backwards compatible? Thanks for any help 

The 2010 runtime should install into win8 with no problems.

craigb
Hmm...  I can't think of any reason why binaries created in a Windows environment with 2010 won't work in Windows 8 as long as you install the Redistributable for 2010 (which has the packages required).  Now deployment from 2010 and using the 2013 Redistributable might be a problem since there's usually big differences internally between major versions.
 
Is it a big hassle to simply try it?

 
Not really, I would just prefer some expert advice before I start installing and/or uninstalling different redistributables. I have that some-would-say irrational new laptop caution 

It's hard enough to get Microsquish to update their products let alone their documentation - lol.

Well I tried installing the 2010 redistributable but it wouldn't let me because it said there was a newer version on my system. So I tried running my executable anyway and it said that I am missing MSVCR100D.dll, the 'D' suffix of which I believe indicates it's a debug version of MSVCR100.dll. Does this mean that I didn't compile it in release mode or something? 

Yes, the "D" indicates "debug". Try just copying that file over from your old computer. It doesn't need to be registered.

I'll try copying the .dll in question. I just tried recompiling it on my old computer as a release version and it's not working. Why, is beyond me, lol! The program takes a directory path as an argument. If there is no such directory, it exits with an error. For some reason, when I compile it as a release version, it's exiting with that error (even though I'm giving it a perfectly valid argument). But if I compile it as a debug version again, it works fine. Yet both are compiled from exactly the same code. Bleh!

Are your invoicing needs so strange that an MS Access program can't handle it?
 
I'm not trying to be snarky sharke but putzing around with C++ to interface with Outlook to create invoices seems just like the thing that Access can do with even less programming skills.
 
Seems like you're trying to use a nuclear war head to drive in a common dry wall nail when a hammer will do.

bapu
Are your invoicing needs so strange that an MS Access program can't handle it?
 
I'm not trying to be snarky sharke but putzing around with C++ to interface with Outlook to create invoices seems just like the thing that Access can do with even less programming skills.
 
Seems like you're trying to use a nuclear war head to drive in a common dry wall nail when a hammer will do.

It's not as nearly as sophisticated as it sounds, it just parses a bunch of tab delimited files which contain exported Google calendar data (which has been synced from Outlook), turns it into a linked list of linked lists and then produces a pretty colored table (in the command window mind you) which summarizes what everyone owes. I then use this table to create the invoices in Quickbooks. It just basically saves me a bunch of time which would otherwise be spent manually counting what each client owes (because each client's jobs may be spread over multiple employee's calendars). It's the kind of thing which could be done in 30 lines in Python, but I ended up writing it in C++ as a fun little exercise. I don't really have the time or inclination to brush up on any other languages at the minute, especially when this little bugger works so well. 

Well now you know why the Chinese weren't interested in ripping you off.