Editing Project Files

Visual Studio 2010 gives you the ability to easily edit the project file associated with your project (.csproj or .vbproj). You might do this to change settings related to how the project is compiled since proj files are MSBuild files.

One would normally close Visual Studio and edit the proj file using a text editor. 
The better way is to first unload the project in Visual Studio by right clicking on the project in the solution explorer and selecting “Unload Project”

 
The project gets unloaded and is marked “unavailable”
The project file can now be edited by right clicking on the unloaded project.


  
After editing the file, the project can be reloaded.

Resource editors in VS 2010

Visual studio also comes with a number of resource editors (see list here).
For example, you could open a file using the Binary editor like so.

Go to File > Open > File..

Select a File and choose the “Open With..” option in the bottom right.

 
We are given the option to choose an editor.

 
Note that clicking on the “Add..” in the dialog above allows you to include your favorite editor.
 
Choosing the “Binary editor” above allows us to edit the file in hex format. In addition, we can also search for hex bytes or ASCII strings using the Find command.
 

The “Open With..” option is also available from within the solution explorer as shown below:

Enjoy!

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