Open Folder in Windows Explorer in VS 2008

August 17, 2007 • from Hood River, Oregon • 7 comments

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Sometimes it's the little things that make life easier. While working I frequently find myself dropping to the Explorer folder level for a number of scenarios:

Tortoise SVN/Subversion checking
Non-code files checking in Web Application Projects
Trace/log files for applications

just to name a few.

In the past I'd squirrel over to Explorer and navigate into the directory to get there.

In Visual Studio 2008 there's a super simple menu option that makes this process easier - a new project context menu option that lets you Open Folder in Windows Explorer:

this is such a little trivial thing but it's one that I find myself using constantly these days and it's a welcome addition in VS 2008.

There are lots of little usability tweaks like this scattered all over VS 2008 - it pays to take a quick look through menus you use frequently and see if there are new features buried that you might have missed out of habit - I didn't find this until a week into my Orcas beta...

The Voices of Reason

Kevin Dente
August 17, 2007

# re: Open Folder in Windows Explorer in VS 2008

I agree, it's an extremely handy feature. There's also an add-in for VS2005 that gives you this.

http://www.csharper.net/blog/_explore_in_windows__add_in_for_visual_studio_2005.aspx

I've been using it for a while, and it's amazing how often I use it.

Nick Parker
August 18, 2007

# re: Open Folder in Windows Explorer in VS 2008

Good stuff, Gaston Milano created CoolCommands, an extension package for Visual Studio 2005 that includes that feature and many more, check out the following search link as he doesn't have all the posts tagged:

http://weblogs.asp.net/search/SearchResults.aspx?q=coolcommands+AND+sectionid%3a191&o=Relevance

Lonnie Rolland
August 19, 2007

# re: Open Folder in Windows Explorer in VS 2008

Went to look for "CoolCommands", and (bottom line) link to dnld is broke/dead. I hope all is okay with Mr. Milano. Probably on vacation... There is a different mind-set in the 'Old World'. ( A better one ) They go on vacation fifty days to our five.

Being stubborn, I kept digging . . .

>AndyM said:
>The correct download link is currently:
>download.deklarit.com/.../coolcommands40.zip
>July 9, 2007 5:11 PM

Bob Archer
August 20, 2007

# re: Open Folder in Windows Explorer in VS 2008

If you want to get alot of good info on some of the goodies in VS2008, take a look at Daniel Moth's blog http://www.danielmoth.com/Blog/. He has done a bunch of entires on little stuff like this. He also has a half dozen or so screen casts on Channel 9 where he goes over this stuff.

Great blog and videos.

BOb

axom
December 05, 2007

# re: Open Folder in Windows Explorer in VS 2008

You can also get to the directory using VisualSVN (which is a really handy install for VS if one uses subversion).

1. Right-click on a file/folder in the solution explorer to see the pop-up menu
2. Move to VisualSVN options
3. Select Disk-Browser

This will work on any version of VS as its really a VisualSVN feature.

online publicity
October 24, 2008

# online publicity

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Gil Yoder
October 27, 2008

# re: Open Folder in Windows Explorer in VS 2008

Rick,

I found your site searching for help on the problem you described with the "Open folder with Windows Explorer" option in VS 2008. Did you ever find a solution?

Rick Strahl's Weblog