Question

Often I use Visual studio to edit standalone files (not in a project). So usually I will have like say 6 files opened (3 html files, 1 css file, 2 js files etc)

And the problem is that whenever i close visual studio, I have to locate and re-open all 7 files again (which is a bother really).

Is there a way for us to like save all 7 files in a state file and simply when i open that state file it will open all the 7 files in whatever order I have last saved them as ?

If you have used Notepad++ you will know what I’m talking about, basically when we close Notepad++ and open it the files that were previously opened stay opened, some sort of functionality like this.

Answer 1

Here’s two Visual Studio macro methods that should do exactly what you need.

SaveAll() saves all open files and writes a file named status.txt to C: in which all open files are written separated by semicolon (totally independent of project/solution):

Sub SaveAll()

    Dim text As String
    Dim i As Integer

    For i = 1 To DTE.Documents.Count
        text += DTE.Documents.Item(i).FullName + ";"
        DTE.Documents.Item(i).Save()
    Next i

    My.Computer.FileSystem.WriteAllText("C:\status.txt", text, False)

End Sub

Next time, when you want to open those files, you simply call OpenAll(). It reads the status file, splits the semicolon separated text, and opens all files:

Sub OpenAll()
    'Open status file
    Dim text As String
    text = My.Computer.FileSystem.ReadAllText("C:\status.txt")

    Dim files As String()
    files = text.Split(";")
    Dim file As String
    For Each file In files
        If file.Length > 0 Then DTE.ItemOperations.OpenFile(file)
    Next
End Sub

It’s easy enough to modify this according to your needs (or even add a file dialogue). Thanks for asking this question, it made me focus on the VS macro IDE again and see how powerful it is.