Visual Studio 2015 - File explorer view

Question

_{Wednesday, February 15, 2017 7:19 AM}

I have created a c++ project from existing code (many files).

In solution explorer and class viewer, I can browser and see the files and classes. It is often that I need to open some files and modify them. I am wondering if there is a way which will show my files in folder hierarchy (file tree) for easy navigation when the path to that file is known.

What I see in solution explorer has everything, it shows a long list of files which made me hard to look up those I am interested in.

programmer

All replies (5)

_{Saturday, February 18, 2017 6:48 AM ✅Answered}

Hi,

Visual Studio 2017 (currently Release Candidate, RC) provides a new button on the Solution Explorer toolbar to switch between the classic "solution" view to a new "source" view that shows the contents with the layout of folders on disk:

You can download Visual Studio 2017 RC here:

https://www.visualstudio.com/vs/visual-studio-2017-rc/

Or you may want to prefer to wait until next March 7 to get the final release rather than the candidate release.

My portal and blog about VSX: http://www.visualstudioextensibility.com<br/> Twitter: https://twitter.com/VSExtensibility\<br/> MZ-Tools productivity extension for Visual Studio: https://www.mztools.com

_{Monday, February 20, 2017 7:57 AM ✅Answered}

Hi ZeroLai,

Thank you for your detail description, and sorry for my misunderstanding.

It looks like there is no such option to show the folder structure for VS 2015 and like Carlos said, there add a new icon ‘Solutions and Folders’ in VS 2017 which can achieve your requirement. You can have a try to install the VS 2017 RC to verify this and it works fine on my side.

Best regards,

Sara

MSDN Community Support
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_{Thursday, February 16, 2017 2:04 AM}

Hi ZeroLai,

Welcome to the MSDN forum.

Refer to your description, you can click the icon ‘Show All Files’ under Solution Explorer, then the solution will display with folder structure. I tried to create a new C++ Win32 solution and add folders and file outside VS IDE (directly in File Explorer) and click the ‘Show All Files’, the result is the following screenshot, which looks like achieve your requirement:

Since I am not sure how did you create the C++ project from existing code, if I have any misunderstand, please feel free to let me know.

Best regards,

Sara

MSDN Community Support
Please remember to click "Mark as Answer" the responses that resolved your issue, and to click "Unmark as Answer" if not. This can be beneficial to other community members reading this thread. If you have any compliments or complaints to MSDN Support, feel free to contact [email protected].

_{Friday, February 17, 2017 3:33 PM}

Hi Sara,

Thanks for trying to help. I clicked "Show All Files", it didn't show what I expected.

I created an example with file and folder structure as below:

I used VS_2015 to create a C++ project with existing code. I see this... (already clicked "Show All Files). All files were shown on the same level.

I

Unclicked "Show All File", I see this:

I use another IDE to create a C++ project with the same set of files. I see this...

programmer

_{Friday, February 24, 2017 7:58 AM}

Thank you very much, switching to VS2017 is an option for the questioned feature

programmer