Installing SharePoint Designer

SharePoint Designer 2010 also includes built-in capabilities for developing external content types. SharePoint Designer 2010 is a free tool that can be used to extend and customize SharePoint sites. To download and install SharePoint Designer 2010, complete the following steps:

1. In Internet Explorer, go to http://www.microsoft.com/downloads.
2. In the Bing Search box on the Downloads page, type SharePoint Designer 2010.
3. Select either Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2010 (32-bit) or Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2010 (64-bit), depending on your desktop operating system.
4. On the subsequent page, click the Download button. When prompted with Do You Want to Run or Save This File? select Save, and save the file to your Desktop. The total size of the download is 254MB for the 32-bit version and 279MB for the 64-bit version.
5. When the download is complete, double-click the SharePointDesigner.exe file on your desktop. This begins the installation process.
6. After the file extraction process completes, read the Microsoft Software License Terms, and accept the terms of the agreement; then click OK. Click the Install Now button. When the installation completes, you will be ready to start using SharePoint Designer.