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Did you know... You can use Solution Folders to hide projects? - #157

In the solution explorer, you can group projects inside of solution folders to improve the manageability of solutions that contain a large number of projects.

With focus on the Solution node in the solution explorer, you'll notice the Add New Solution Folder button become visible.  Now you can drag and drop projects into this solution folder to hide, as shown below.

A Solution Folder

But let's actually hide the project.  Right-click on your newly created Solution Folder and click on Hide.  Now the project is hidden, and new icon appears to unhide projects.  (and yes, you can still build successfully in this state)

Now the Unhide button is visible

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Posted: Friday, February 22, 2008 3:00 AM by saraford

Comments

BioSensorAB » Did you know… You can use Solution Folders to hide projects? - #157 said:

PingBack from http://www.biosensorab.org/2008/02/22/did-you-know-you-can-use-solution-folders-to-hide-projects-157/

# February 22, 2008 7:04 AM

user said:

So, why do I need this? Is there any performance benefit, like faster solution loading?

# February 24, 2008 11:34 AM

LucasC said:

Thank you - you just solved my issue of organising umpteen-project solutions!

And, hoping not to steal your thunder for another tip: just when I thought to post a suggestion to have a quick way of unloading all projects in such a solution folder, I see it is already there (right click the solution folder and see "Unload Projects in Solution Folder" :) ). The designers of VS were ahead of me again...

In case you wonder why I would like to unload a group of projects: I noticed that having any Compact Framework projects open slows down VS quite a bit (especially the build phase). This way I can work on the non-CF projects in the same solution as CF projects without incurring the slowdown unless actually doing work on the CF projects.

# February 29, 2008 8:29 AM

Darshit Dave said:

Hi Sara,

Is this available only in Visual Studio 2008? Or is it available in Visual Studio 2005 too?

Thanks,

Darshit Dave

# March 14, 2008 6:38 AM

Mike said:

I've really come to like the solution folders thanks to your tip.

Is there any way to map solution folders to real folders on disk or in version control?

The fact that VS creates a flat physical directory structure even when projects are in solution folders is starting to become cumbersome.

Thanks,

Mike

# April 7, 2008 12:44 PM
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