what's the purpose of the 'Refresh' command on the solution explorer window?
(When we select a project, the button is enabled)
Its really helpful when you have Show All Files is turned on in a Web application project (this might work for other project types). With the Refresh, you can see files added on the file system level and right-click them to include them in your project.
This may be an overly simple response, but I use the refresh button quite often to populate the Solution Explorer with files that have been created outside of VS.
For example, I use a separate IDE to do my Actionscript work where lots of files get added which VS is not aware of until I refresh the solution explorer window. After they appear, I can now commit them to SourceSafe.
If you have version control integration, the tree view is decorated with source control status annotations. Refresh updates these when they get out of sync.
Related
I'm in the process of migrating some Web Sites to Web Applications, using Visual Studio 2017. One thing I can't seem to figure out is how do I open multiple .cs files at the same time? I can open the .aspx file for them easy enough by right clicking and choosing Open. I can view the code behind on a single page at a time by right clicking and choosing View Code. In the old Web Sites I could right click multiple files at once and select View Code, however, it appears in Web Applications that option has been replaced with "View Code Gen File" which isn't the same thing. It's painfully slow to open a single page at a time so hopefully there is a setting I am just not finding.
EDIT: As requested, uploading screenshots. Only .aspx files are selected but when more than one is selected the "View Source" option is no longer there. Also I should note that if multiple are selected in Solution Explorer, pressing F7 also has no effect, though that keystroke does work to View Source of a single file at a time.
After further experimentation, I now see what you see and I agree that it's something that Microsoft broke along the way. In fact, in your own image, if you single-select an aspx file in Solution Explorer then you can see the "<>" icon appear in the button bar at the top of Solution Explorer. But that icon disappears whenever you select two or more aspx files.
I've done a lot of work with Visual Studio over the years and I can't imagine any justifiable reason why Microsoft would have deliberately removed the View Code option from the context menu for multiply selected aspx files.
This appears to be a bona fide bug that should be reported to Microsoft.
Meanwhile, as a workaround, use the File | Open option in Visual Studio 2017 and, in the resulting Open File dialog box, simply multi-select any .cs files you need (this dialog box allows you to multi-select files and open all of them at once).
I am using VS2012 Premium. I do not have a menu item to launch the Data Sources window. According to MSDN I should have a menu item:
On the menu bar, choose View, Other Windows, Data Sources (or choose the Shift+Alt+D keys).
but I have no such item.
The shortcut doesn't work either. I have reset the shortcut from Shift+Alt+D (which drops down the Debug menu item) to something else but this still does not display the window.
I have created a new VS solution which is not an MVC website (a WCF application) to address this suggestion that the option is hidden in MVC sites.
I have also run devenv /ResetSettings
as suggested on this MSDN forum posting.
Has anyone any ideas how I can launch the Data Sources window?
Thanks.
It depends on the project type you choose. For instance, a WCF Service Application project will not show you this option, while WCF Service Library project will show you the option.
The issue I had was that my Report Data pane went missing when working with RDLC files.
Click somewhere on your main design working area (in my case the design area for the RDLC I am updating).
Then go to the View menu -> Report Data.
The Data Sources and DataSets are now available in the Report Data pane.
Another possible solution for some:
I've noticed that the View > Other Windows > Data Sources option is not available when the active file in the main window is a .sql query file (I'm sure this would be the case for other types of files as well).
In this case, simply selecting a file associated with the solution will make the View > Other Windows > Data Sources option available again.
I need to know how to open the form of a program I am debugging.
I loaded an existing solution into VS2010, I can see the code, but I want to see the GUI part of the project, click on buttons and see what part of the code they take me to, set breakpoints where I feel like.
I don't know how to see the GUI in VS2010, where can I do that?
Also, where would be a good resource to learn the ins and outs of VS2010?
Depending on how the UI was created, there may or may not be a way to see the UI at design time. Particularly if this is an older Windows UI application, it's likely that the windows are created entirely in code, and there is no design-time UI for you to see.
There is a dialog editor, for dialog windows that are defined in resource (*.rc) files. CTRL-SHIFT-E brings up the Resource Viewer and you can look for things under the Dialog node. It is possible that your main window is a dialog-style window, as that's one of the options you get when you create a new MFC-based application.
Otherwise, your only option to see what your UI looks like is to run the program and see. Tracking down which UI elements do which actions in your program will require finding the appropriate event handlers or message handler methods (again, depending on what UI framework, if any, is in use) and setting breakpoints.
The generic answer is:
Hit F5 to starting Debugging mode. (Or under the Debug menu choose Start Debugging)
But it depends on how your project is setup and what type of project it is if F5 will work that easily for you.
What kind of program/language are you using?
With a form, I believe you have to File-->Open-->Project/Solution
Now if its a website, you would open Website. If you tried to open a windows form under a website then you wont see the design.
Typically you would just double click your form name (form1.cs) because then your design view will pop up or hit Shift+F7 or rightclick --> view designer. Then just double click whatever tools you have on your form (like a button) and it will automatically go to the button code.
If its a website, then it would be under website1.aspx while the code sits in website1.aspx.cs
But if none of that helps, here is a good place to learn this stuff
VisualStudioWalkthroughs
Is there any way to associate a web page with a project in Visual Studio, and have it load up in the IDE? For example, I have a project who's task list is maintained on a web site. It would be ideal to see those tasks within the IDE instead of a separate page. I can accomplish that now by following these steps:
Press Ctrl-Alt-R to open a Web Browser page
Change the URL to my desired path
Position the page as desired (like in its own tab group, off to the right of my code)
It would be nice to have a link somewhere in my project that I could click and open this page in the IDE without changing the URL every time. I have several different projects that would benefit from this. Any ideas?
Something like this happens with Visual Studio Team Foundation Server. The various documents and guidance associated with your current Team Project area accessible from within Visual Studio, in the Team Explorer window.
You can also create a Guidance Package to apply various commands and pieces of documentation at appropriate places within your projects. see Guidance Automation Extensions and Guidance Automation Toolkit.
Nice idea. The only thing that I can think of is via Visual Studio Extensibility. Basically,
Define an MSBuild property in the project file or a custom field in the solution file that has the project url.
Write a VS package that subscribes to the solution load event or something similar (I am not familiar with VS object model but I am sure there is an event like that) and looks for that custom field and extracts the url if it exists in the solution or the project file and then opens a web browser within VS that points to that url.
Here's my quick hack around this problem:
Create a text file in the project. I called my "notes.txt", and I use it to store notes, ideas, etc. that don't have a home elsewhere in the project.
Add the web link to the top of the file.
Open the text file in the IDE and put it in a new tab group. I put mine in a vertical tab group off to the right.
Drag the separator as far over as it will go to "hide" the tab group. This way it's always open and available but not taking up much space.
When you want the web page, "show" the tab group (i.e. drag the separator back) and ctrl-click the link.
This has the added benefit of opening the web page in the same tab group as the text file, so you can push them both aside when not using them.
I'm sure there's more that could be done by writing packages as others have suggested, but this was a low-effort way to get me close enough to what I wanted. I'd love to hear other suggestions or modifications that might make this setup better.
I used to be able to right click Folders in my project and click 'refresh' to refresh the files within them, I don't see the option to do this any more, how do I fix it? The same thing has happened at work and at home.. has it always been like this and have I gone insane?
I still have the option. You might be able to get it back by customizing the context menu. Refresh is under Commands > View in the Customize dialog.
The refresh icon is at the top of the solution explorer for me, does the job