I am working on a project and I can see lots of folders which are dimmed and have dotted outline. I can expand them and each usually contains several projects inside. These are not hidden folders. Also, when I try to open projects into windows explorer, it opens up in a differently named folder than what it appears in Visual Studio.
I want to know what is it and how can this be done?
They are called Solution Folders and they are not bound to the folder structure on the disk. If you open your solution file with a text editor, you can see how they reference the projects.
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I have a project in visual studio where there are several files arranged in folders (filters). Inside the project, everything is well organized, but as soon as I go to the explorer, I see that all the project files are in the same folder. How can I properly organize my project so that the repository doesn't look like a bunch of files in one folder?
I use Visual Studio 2022
I tried to manually decompose the files into folders, but when I did this, visual studio began to swear that it could not find the files
Can you share a screenshot of what you have and what you want?
I ask because there are two aspects to this.
The arrangement of projects within Solution Explorer
The arrangement of files within projects within Solution Explorer
The first can be controlled by adding solution folders. The structure is stored within the .sln file.
The second is generally a representation of the file system, depending upon your project type.
Also, make sure you're using the Solution Explorer view. Does this button appear clicked for you?
If so, you should unclick it. Solution Explorer can show you either the solution view (default, and what I refer to above) or the file system view.
To create a new class in Visual Studio, I hit Ctrl+Shift+A, then select "Class". The class creation dialog does not give me any option to put the file anywhere. Visual Studio creates the file in the solution root dir.
So now my solution root dir has 20+ files and a mix of .cs, .sln, .csproj etc files.
I want to be able to view my project in a tree structure, where I organize the class files into a folder hierarchy. How can I do this in Visual Studio?
You can create new folders in your solution tree (in mouse right-click menu) and place your new files there (you probably can even drag files from another location). 20+ files is not much of course :)
I have a standalone project that contains some code I'd like to re-used. I created a library project in order to contain that code. There does not appear to be a way to move files from the one project to the other. (cut/paste in solution explorer did not work)
I then manually copied the files in Windows explorer (outside of VS) into the library's main "folder" but they didn't show up in solution explorer either.
Anyone know of a way to do this without having to manually create each file in the library and then copying/pasting the code into the files?
You need to copy the files and paste them into your solution/project folder(s). Once the files physically exist within your solution/project folder structure (Windows FileSystem / Explorer), then you right-click on your project within Visual Studio, select Add then Existing Item. Browse to the location of that file and open it. It will now exist within your project as a code file.
If you have two projects within the same solution, you can simply drag the file from one project to the other within Visual Studio Solution Explorer. That will create a copy of the class in the new project. You can then remove the old one and clean up any code references in the first project.
In the Visual Studio (2010) Solution Explorer, what do the dotted "ghost" folders mean? I can still open them up and open contents within them, so how do they differ from the rest of the normal yellow folders? My reason for asking is that currently my project is missing a file that it expects to be in one of the dotted folders, so I was hoping that some insight into exactly what they mean would be helpful.
Thanks!
Also this can refer to a file/folder that is not included in the project. This can be included by right clicking and selecting 'Include In Project'.
It means it is showing you a file or folder that typically would be hidden by Visual Studio. For example, the bin folder isn't something you typically interface with directly - when you build in VS, it adds the files into the bin folder. So, you don't really need to have access to it as it doesn't contain any editable files. However, it does still exist within the directory.
Does anyone have a way to add multiple folders and (existing) files within those folders to a Visual Studio project in a single step (or via macro)? Let's assume all of the folders and files were copied/pasted into the project folder where they need to reside relative to the project folder, but are not actually stored in the .csproj or .vbproj file, which I believe is a requirement to compile those files into the solution/project.
This works great if you have a web application project in your solution, but not so well if you have a .csproj or .vbproj. In that case, you must manually add folders (and nested folders), and add existing files and browse to each one individually, which can take a long time.
In the solution explorer, select the project, click the "Show All Files" button - .
This will show all the files, even those not part of the project. You can now select all of these in the solution explorer (using Ctrl + Click) then right click and go to "Include In Project".
In Visual Studio 2013 (and possibly earlier) you drag the folder from windows explorer and drop it on the project in the solution explorer.
Other answer given in this thread wouldn't work for me as the files I want to add (DTSX files) are in a different folder, and copying/moving them causes other problems. Here is what worked for me:
Using Visual Studio 2015, use Windows Explorer to locate the files you want to add to your project. Copy those files to the clipboard. If DTSX files are what you are dealing with, in the Solution Explorer right-click on SSIS Packages, and then click on Paste.