“Not able to view the solution file in Visual Studio” – Hide and Show solution file in Visual Studio

Sometime you may came across with this problem that, you are not able to view the solution file in Visual Studio though you have solution file in proper place and the file physically exists in solution folder . You may just wonder why you are not able to view the solution file. Yeah, it could be some missing settings with in visual studio.

If you create any Visual Studio Project, by default you will get below view in Solution Explorer ( Solution file and the Project files associated with in solution ).

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But in case, your solution explore looks like as below, where you don’t have the solution file listed.

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You have to go to Tools > Options > Project and Solutions > General , where you can see “Always Shows Solution”  is Unchecked.

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Once you checkedAlways Shows Solution” , you will able to view the Solution file with in solution explorer.

Note : By default “Always Shows Solution” is Checked

This things is really required when you want to add multiple project in a single solution, which is most common.  Now,  if you have multiple project already added with in solution, this things will not work, which means, if you unchecked the “Always Shows Solution” option you can still able to view the solution file as it has been associated with multiple projects  ( Refer below image ).

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Hope this will help.

Thanks !

Aj

Abhijit Jana

Abhijit runs the Daily .NET Tips. He started this site with a vision to have a single knowledge base of .NET tips and tricks and share post that can quickly help any developers . He is a Former Microsoft ASP.NET MVP, CodeProject MVP, Mentor, Speaker, Author, Technology Evangelist and presently working as a .NET Consultant. He blogs at http://abhijitjana.net , you can follow him @AbhijitJana . He is the author of book Kinect for Windows SDK Programming Guide.

One Comment to ““Not able to view the solution file in Visual Studio” – Hide and Show solution file in Visual Studio”

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