Exploring Your COBOL Projects and Solutions

Solution Explorer

Solution Explorer is the default window of Visual Studio for exploring and managing your solutions and projects. To open the window select View > Solution Explorer.

Solution Explorer displays the projects that form your solution, the files and folders in a project as they appear on the physical hard drive, and any assemblies, COM objects or files the project references. The context menus within Solution Explorer provide a variety of command that help you manage your projects.

Project Details Window

To open the window, select your project or solution in Solution Explorer and click Projects > Project Details Window.

The Project Details window shows a list of the files in a project or files in a solution along with various file details. In the window you can sort the files by a specific detail, double-click a file and open it in the editor, access the file properties from the context menu or reset the file directives.

The window includes the following columns:

Name

File name.

Type

Shows the file type such as CBL or CPY.

Error Count

Displays the number of compiler errors reported for a file.

Full Path

Displays the absolute file path on your hard drive.

Dialect

Shows the dialect of the COBOL files.

Directives

Informs the user if there are any directives set on the file that override the directives set for the project. Right-click a file in the window and select Properties to access the file properties. Alternatively, choose Reset Directives if you wish to apply the directives set in the global properties.

From the context menu for the file you can access the file properties or reset the directives on the file.