Collapse All Projects in the Solution Explorer (Visual Studio)

If you work in large projects usually, you can end with up to 30, 40 , 50 projects or more inside a single solution.

If that´s your case, it is sometimes a pain in the ass work with the solution explorer. In addition to that, Visual Studio sometimes expands the full solution when opens it. How much time have you wasted clicking project by project just to get a tiny, collapsed solution?

No more!

Thanks to Edwin Evans we have a simple VB Macro that collapses the entire solution. You can find the article here.

Just go to Tools -> Macros -> New Macro Project, rename it as you like, and paste the VB code there. Afterwards, you can create a custom ToolBar in the VisualStudio IDE and add there you new macro as a button.

Et voilá, one click collapse for your entire solution!

I´ve tried it and It works, at least in Visual Studio 2008. I´ll post another article today on how to customize your toolbar… keep reading!

PS: To your comfort, I paste here Edwin Evans code:

Sub CollapseAll()

' Get the the Solution Explorer tree

Dim UIHSolutionExplorer As UIHierarchy

UIHSolutionExplorer = DTE.Windows.Item( _

Constants.vsext_wk_SProjectWindow).Object()

' Check if there is any open solution

If (UIHSolutionExplorer.UIHierarchyItems.Count = 0) Then

' MsgBox("Nothing to collapse. You must have an open solution.")

Return

End If

' Get the top node (the name of the solution)

Dim UIHSolutionRootNode As UIHierarchyItem

UIHSolutionRootNode = UIHSolutionExplorer.UIHierarchyItems.Item(1)

' Collapse each project node

Dim UIHItem As UIHierarchyItem

For Each UIHItem In UIHSolutionRootNode.UIHierarchyItems

UIHItem.UIHierarchyItems.Expanded = False

' Select the solution node, or else when you click

' on the solution window

' scrollbar, it will synchronize the open document

' with the tree and pop

' out the corresponding node which is probably not what you want.

UIHSolutionRootNode.Select(vsUISelectionType.vsUISelectionTypeSelect)

End Sub