Refresh button in Visual Studio Solution Explorer not working

Eva picture Eva · Feb 11, 2013 · Viewed 55.5k times · Source

Just got Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows Desktop and finding myself overly annoyed that the Solution Explorer doesn't accurately reflect the state of my project. I keep clicking Refresh, but it doesn't actually do anything. Microsoft's rather, uh, verbose explanation of how to use it was no help. Oddly enough, my project does refresh sometimes, but I can't figure out what the cause is. It's definitely not the refresh button.

Here's what my Solution Explorer looks like right now:
my solution explorer
I've deleted a lot of these classes. Things like "Term" are what I typed while in the process of naming a class, but the Solution Explorer shows them as separate classes. Also some of the classes I have aren't showing up.

This whole thing is really messed up, and I'm having trouble visualizing what my project looks like because Solution Explorer doesn't show an up-to-date outline of my classes.

How do I refresh the Solution Explorer?

Answer

dmathisen picture dmathisen · Mar 13, 2013

There's a "show all files" button in the top row of Solution Explorer. Click that and you should see your missing files/folders. Right click and choose "Include in Project".

show all files