How do I open a project without a .sln file in Visual Studio?

Question

I was writing this program all in Vim and now I'm thinking of moving to Visual Studio, but since I didn't start in Visual Studio in the first place, there is no .sln file to open from. How should I open such a project in Visual Studio?

Answer 1

If you have a web project (without a .sln), you must do:

Menu File → Open → Web Site...

And choose the folder where the project is.

Answer 2

If a *.csproj file exists, you can build a new solution by Visual Studio at first. Next, you can open this *.csproj file in Visual Studio.

Answer 3

The simplest way to do this (assuming this is not a web project, as indicated in another answer) would most likely be to:

1. Create a new project (of the desired type), which should also create the solution for it to live within.
2. In the solution explorer, right click and select "Add > Existing item..."
3. Insert all individual files that belong in this new project.

It's probably also worth noting that it's a good idea to double check the project setting, namespaces, etc. before you get too far with building up your project to avoid potential issues later.

Answer 4

An even simpler way in Visual Studio is to follow this:

Menu File → New → Project from existing code

Choose the source file location and a .csproj and .sln file is created.