How to open Designer View in Visual C#?

Question

I got a project source codes developed by Visual C# 2012. I opened & built it without any problem. Then, I would like to open its visual portions; such as forms, buttons, ... I clicked "View" menu, I found the menu items are 'Code', "Solution Explorer", "Team Explorer", "Server Explorer", ... The item 'Designer' is missing. How come? How can I open 'Designer' view window?

Answer 1

The designer view is only available for some classes. Those that have any graphical representation to be displayed, such as

• form and user control in WinForms
• window, page or user control in WPF
• view in ASP.NET

In case of these components the designer is available from the context menu in Solution Explorer. So open the solution explorer (View -> Solution Explorer, or Ctrl+W, S). Select one of the mentioned classes like form or user control. Right-click it and from the context menu select View Designer (or simply Shift+F7). That will move you to the designer view.