Visual Studio's Solution Explorer gives you a quick view of your files, but you'll be able to search through thousands of files quickly with a free add-in.
The Solution Explorer shows you all of the files in your solution in an easy-to-use tree. Each project is a node, and under that node is any number of files and folders. The Solution Explorer usually works perfectly; however, it starts to fall short when you have a lot of projects and files. If your solution has six projects and 500 files, finding one of those files starts to become quite a task.
A free add-in that provides a new interface for finding files anywhere in your solution is available. It is called the VS File Finder and can be downloaded from the following link:
http://www.zero-one-zero.com/vs
The first step is to download the add-in and run the installation
file. The installation does not include any choices and can be
completed by simply launching the
.msi file. Once the add-in is installed, it
will show up as a new window the next time you start Visual Studio.
If it does not automatically appear or if you'd like
to show the window again after you close it, you need to click View
The text box at the top of the window lets you enter any number of charactersthe list below will be filtered based on what is entered in the window. Unlike the IntelliSense provided by the command window, this window will search for the entered string in any part of the filename. Figure 3-7 shows the string "Collection" entered in the text box and the filtering that the tool provides.
After the string "Collection" is entered, the tool shows only the files whose name contains the word "Collection." This type of searching is very useful if you maintain common naming conventions in your project. You can also click on the headings for the list and sort it based on the name, project, or file.
The VS File Finder also includes the ability to exclude certain files from the search list. If you wanted to exclude all .css files from the search list, you first need to click on the blue plus sign to the right of the text box. This brings up the Options screen for VS File Finder, which is shown in Figure 3-8.
Next, you need to click the Add button to see the Add Exclude Filter dialog, which is shown in Figure 3-9.
Next, you need to enter a description for your exclusion; in this example, "CSS Files" will work perfectly. Then you enter your filter (in this example, .css, which will exclude all CSS files) and click OK. The filter works a little differently than the search in that it needs to be an actual extension; it can't be any part of the filename. After you enter your exclusion filter, all .css files will be excluded from the search. This is particularly useful if you include files in your project that you are not actively working on. For example, you might have a number of .css files that are part of a company standard that you would not want to edit and thus can be excluded from your search list.
The VS File Finder add-in provides a method to highlight certain files in the search list. This is configured in the Options screen that was shown back in Figure 3-8. To highlight a certain type of file, you simply need to click the Add button in the Highlighted Files section. You are then prompted with the Add Highlight Filter dialog, which is shown in Figure 3-10.
First you need to specify a description of the file type. In this example, I am going to specify that all .cs files be highlighted with a particular color and that my description will be "CS Files." To apply this to files ending in the .cs extension, you need to specify .cs in the Filter box. And last, you need to choose what color to highlight the files with; this is done by clicking on the color in the box filled with different colors. After you add this filter, all .cs records will be highlighted with the selected color. This is a useful technique for spotting certain types of files in the search list.
During installation, VS File Finder also adds a command to Visual Studio. You can use this command to assign a shortcut key to VS File Finder. Since this add-in is about speed, it makes sense to be able to quickly launch the add-in with a shortcut key, as opposed to using the mouse.
To create a shortcut for VS File Finder, you simply need to wire a shortcut key to the VSFileFinder.Connect.ShowVSFileFinder command. For more information on creating shortcuts, see [Hack #24] .
VS File Finder is a very valuable tool that has the capacity to greatly speed up the search for files in your solutions. VS File Finder was written by Jonathan Payne and is available at http://www.zero-one-zero.com/vs. The source code for this add-in is also available from that web site.