Solution Explorer Sync'ing in Visual Studio 2012
Posted
Sat, Sep 8 2012 19:08
by
Deborah Kurata
This is just a little feature, but a very useful one: Solution Explorer now allows you to control the sync to the currently active tab.
In prior versions of Visual Studio, Solution Explorer automatically synchronized its position to the active tab. When you clicked on a tab, Solution Explorer positioned itself to that file.
This was frustrating when you were working on files in a particular component. You click on another tab to look at something and Solution Explorer automatically jumped to that file. It was possible to turn off this behavior using Tools | Options, but then you could never find where you were in Solution Explorer.
In Visual Studio 2012, Solution Explorer allows you to define when it should synchronize to the current tab. Here is how it works:
First, open one code file from one of your components and another code file from another component. The results will look something like the figure below.
In the above example, the Customers.cs and the CustomerWin.cs files are opened. Solution Explorer has the CustomerWin.cs highlighted.
Click on the other tab, Customers.cs in this example. Notice that Solution Explorer does not automatically sync up to the selected tab.
If you do want Solution Explorer to sync up at any time, click the Sync button in the Solution Explorer toolbar.
[The red box around the sync button was added for illustration.]
If you want the old behavior, where Solution Explorer tracks with the active tab, you can use Tools | Options:
[The red box around the sync button was added for illustration.]
Use the new Sync button any time you want to sync Solution Explorer to the active tab.
Enjoy!