A friend sent me his visual studio project that contains 2 files:
naomi.sln
naomi.v12.suo
When I try to open the first file I get the error in visual studios:
One or more projects in the solution were not loaded correctly. Please see the Output Window for details.
How can I open the project?
You don't actually have the project (only the solution - .sln file). The project file should have .vcproj or .vcxproj extension. The .suo file contains some solution user data (as seen in [MS.Docs]: Solution User Options (.Suo) File). Get the project file that the solution references, and you'll be able to open it.
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I have a small visual studio project that is in my personal directory. I know need to copy this project to my team directory but am having issues with the solution file.
I have been following this example. All is fine until I get near to the bottom of the page at the section Editing the Solution File. When I open my solution file in notepad++ most of it is NUL or other unreadable symbols. I can see a few lines of english which is the directory location. However doing a ctrl find of "Microsoft Visual Studio Solution File" does not find anything or even the word "Project".
I have tried updating the directory location to the new location in this file but the solution does not load in Visual Studio. It just seems to me my solution file is pretty different to the one in the example?
The project I'm working on normally runs on an embedded Linux system, but we have a rehosted version for debugging in Windows. Naturally the Visual Studio project isn't always kept up-to-date with the files in our "real" project.
Sometimes a file is moved from one directory to another. This leaves Visual Studio unable to locate the file.
I know I can close Visual Studio, open the project file in a text editor, and manually change the file location. But this is annoying. How can I point Visual Studio to the new file location without manually editing the project file in a text editor?
First off, you don't need to close Visual Studio. You can unload a project (Solution Explorer > right click on project > Unload project), then right-click again and choose "Edit", this opens the project file in VS's text editor. After you save the file you can tell VS to reload the project by right-clicking the project node again.
However in your case, a better solution might be to use wildcard expressions in your project file, as documented here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms171454.aspx and http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms171453.aspx
i.e. Use a double-asterisk to tell VS to recursively search a directory to include files matching another wildcard pattern.
e.g.
<ItemsGroup>
<Compile Include="**/*.cpp" Exclude="SomeSpecificFileToExclude.cpp" />
</ItemsGroup>
I was writing this program all in Vim and now I'm thinking of moving to Visual Studio, but since I didn't start in Visual Studio in the first place, there is no .sln file to open from. How should I open such a project in Visual Studio?
If you have a web project (without a .sln), you must do:
Menu File → Open → Web Site...
And choose the folder where the project is.
If a *.csproj file exists, you can build a new solution by Visual Studio at first. Next, you can open this *.csproj file in Visual Studio.
An even simpler way in Visual Studio is to follow this:
Menu File → New → Project from existing code
Choose the source file location and a .csproj and .sln file is created.
The simplest way to do this (assuming this is not a web project, as indicated in another answer) would most likely be to:
Create a new project (of the desired type), which should also create the solution for it to live within.
In the solution explorer, right click and select "Add > Existing item..."
Insert all individual files that belong in this new project.
It's probably also worth noting that it's a good idea to double check the project setting, namespaces, etc. before you get too far with building up your project to avoid potential issues later.
I checked the solution file and the project file, and can not find anything related to this setting. When people get latest version from TFS source control, they always see the 'loaded' status, which is not really what I want.
This information is stored in the solution user options file (.suo) which you can find in the same directory as the solution file. As the name implies this is user specific information which means sharing this across the team will be difficult because then everyone will need to live with the same options and store files in the exact location because the .suo file contains full paths.
For anyone else coming here with Visual Studio 2019, the unloading of projects is no longer saved in the SUO (at least in my experience). To save your unloaded project settings, you want to create a solution filter file (.slnf) which is the same as your solution file (.sln) except that it stores which projects you want loaded or not when opening the solution. Once created, you will double-click the .snlf file instead of the .sln file in order to load your filtered projects.
To create the solution filter file you can follow the instructions at this link or follow the summary below:
Open your solution (.sln)
Unload the projects that you want filtered out
Right-click on the solution from within the Solution Explorer
Choose Save As Solution Filter
Choose a location to save the file (I saved it right next my .sln file)
This will add the .slnf to your recently opened solutions list so you can either open from there going forward or navigate to the .slnf file and double-click it.
If you still want to see your unloaded projects after opening the .slnf, highlight the solution from within the Solution Explorer and click the Show All Files icon.
Base on this if you want to share your load/unload setting via source control you can use solution filter file which is .slnf extension.
So when you open the .slnf file instead of .sln file you will see the filtered project are loaded.
On MacOS with Visual Studio 2022 for Mac (i.e. v17.0 Preview, "Visual Studio Community 2022 for Mac Preview") I do not see either .sln nor .slnf files.
I observe that unloaded projects are saved in folder /.vs/[SolutionName]/xs/UserPrefs.xml. And when I close Visual Studio 2022 for Mac, I see that UserPrefs.xml is saved.
UserPrefs.xml Snippet:
<DisabledProjects>
<String>...</String>
</DisabledProjects>
I can open my project by double clicking on the .csproj file. It opens fine and it doesn’t generate a .sln. If I copy the same project to a virtual machine and do the same it opens but creates a .sln file.
I really don’t need a solution I would prefer to only work on a single project.
Am I missing something here?
Visual Studio always creates a solution. If it cannot find one in the same folder as the .csproj file then it will create one itself, based on what it can reverse-engineer from the project file content.
The solution is hidden by default if the solution only contains one project. Fixing this is recommended: Tools + Options, Projects and Solutions, General, "Always show solution" checkbox.
There is always a solution, even if you don't see it. There's a setting that determines whether the solution is visible when there is only one project.