Question

I have an ASP.NET MVC3 project that has a database. I want to attach that database to SQL Server Management Studio.

In SQL Server Management Studio, I right click Databases, then click Attach, then click Add and it shows the folder/file selection dialog.

The problem is it won’t let me explore any folder inside my user account folder (c:\users\Bob). I can see the Bob folder but there is no + to expand, and shows no child items (even though I know there are files in my windows user folder). Why isn’t it letting me explore there?

SQL Server Management Studio is version 11.0.21 (SQL Server 2012)

I have tried selecting All files from the filter dropdown instead of *.mdf, but no files show.

Answer 1

Two other things to note:

1. The ‘attach’ looks in the default ‘DATA’ directory that is
   configured for the server as shown below.
2. You may or may not have an *.ldf file. When you try to attach,
   SSMS thinks you have one, so if you do not, you will have to click
   ‘remove’ on that file in the list of files to attach.