What does this Visual Studio icon mean?

Question

When I opened up a VS solution this morning, the icons for files in the data folder had changed. They normally look like (a slightly different folder):

They now look like:

What does that icon mean, and how could I possibly find this out (apart from posting this question, hopefully)??

Motivation: The issue is that these files are used as upload files in web tests, and are now all failing with "Request failed: Could not find a part of the path" even when I add them to the path, and I am absolutely certain that the paths are correct (copied the path from the file properties).

Anything at all that I could try would be hugely appreciated.

Answer 1

It means that the files or folders are out of project .

To add on the project, right click over the item and on the context menu click on Include on project .

Answer 2

The dotted outline means they're not part of the project - you need to include them back in the project. You should be able to do this by right-clicking on the file and selecting include from the context menu.

Here's a screenshot to illustrate (note that you can also add entire folders, as in my screenshot below):