Tool to view the contents of the Solution User Options file (.suo)

visual-studio projects-and-solutions suo
Joseph Daigle picture Joseph Daigle · Sep 10, 2008 · Viewed 13.9k times · Source

Are there any free tools available to view the contents of the solution user options file (the .suo file that accompanies solution files)?

I know it's basically formatted as a file system within the file, but I'd like to be able to view the contents so that I can figure out which aspects of my solution and customizations are causing it grow very large over time.

Answer

frank koch picture frank koch · Jul 13, 2014

A bit late for the original poster, but maybe useful to others.

Two freeware viewers for structured storage files (including .suo-files):

https://github.com/ironfede/openmcdf (old URL: http://sourceforge.net/projects/openmcdf/)

http://www.mitec.cz/ssv.html (free for non-commercial use)

When you open a .suo file in one of these viewers, you will see streams related to:

  • Bookmarks
  • Debugger watches
  • Unloaded projects
  • Outlining
  • Task-list user tasks
  • Debugger exceptions
  • Debugger Breakpoints
  • Debugger find source data
  • Open document windows

And much more...

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