A few months ago, I posted an article on my blog explaining Versioning Multiple Assemblies by changing one partial AssemblyInfo file.

Periodically, I get email asking how to add an existing file without having Visual Studio copy the file into the project directory, which is the default behavior.

If you want to add an existing file to a project and have the project point to the file where it resides, press the little arrow key on the right side of the add button on the add existing dialog.  The arrow will present a small context menu that allows the option of adding the file as a link, which will cause the Visual Studio project to point to that file where it is instead of copying it to the project directory.

-Darren

One thing that has constantly annoyed me with SQL Server Management Studio is the My Projects folder (which is often the default folder when opening or saving files) is set to \My Documents\SQL Server Management Studio\Projects and there appears to be no way to change it. If you go into Tools -> Options you won’t find anywhere that you can change this setting.

SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) uses the Visual Studio Shell, so there has to be a way to change these settings, just not through the UI. The settings are stored in an .vssettings XML file in My Documents\SQL Server Management Studio\Settings folder. Make sure you close SSMS before making changes to this file, SSMS writes to it when you close the application and will overwrite any changes you make. To change the My Projects folder you are looking for this line:

<PropertyValue name="ProjectsLocation">%vsspv_user_documents%\My Projects</PropertyValue>

The value inside is the location of the "My Projects" folder. Simply change the value, and the next time you open SSMS the "My Projects" folder will be mapped.

If you peruse this file you will see many other settings you can change, I would just caution you to make a backup of the file before changing too much.

-James

Picky about your code? Visual Studio 2005 is going to make you very happy then (as long as you use C#, but then again that’s the only way to be really happy anyway). You can specify every aspect of how your code is formatted through the Options menu. Simply navigate to Tools – Options – Text Editor – C# – Formatting and you can see the following options for Indentation, New Lines, Spacing, and Wrapping as seen in this screen shot: