View more than one project/solution in Visual Studio

Question

This is the way Visual Studio is designed: One solution, one Visual Studio (VS) instance.

Besides switching between solutions in one VS instance, you can also open another VS instance and open your other solution with that one. Next to solutions there are as you said "projects". You can have multiple projects within one solution and therefore view many projects at the same time.

There's a much easier (but not so obvious) way; right click on the Visual Studio icon in the taskbar, then right click on the application name in the popup menu, then click "Open". Windows will then open another instance where you can open another solution in.

If you have two separate solutions, then you cannot view them simultaneously in the same VS instance. However, you can open multiple instances of VS and tab between them.

An alternative would be to import the projects from one solution into the other, thus putting all of your projects into one solution. You can do this by following these steps:

1. In the Solution Explorer, select the Solution into which you want to import a project. Right-click, and select Add->Existing Project from the context menu.

2. In the file chooser, find the project file that you want to import (it will end in .XXproj where XX is the language you're using).

3. Click Open and voila! Your project is imported.

There is a way to store multiple solutions in one instance of VS.

Attempt the following steps:

1. File > Open > Project/Solution
2. This will bring up the open project window, notice at the bottom where it says options, select add to solution

3. Then select the file you want to add and click open
4. This will then add the solution to your project. You still won't be able to run the same project in a single instance of VS, but you can have all your code organized in one place.

NOTE: This worked for Visual Studio 2013 Professional

Just right click on the Visual Studio icon and then select "New Window" from the contextual toolbar that appears on the bottom in Windows 8. A new instance of Visual Studio will launch and then you can open your second project.

You can create a new blank solution and add your different projects to it.

You can have multiple projects in one instance of Visual Studio. The point of a VS solution is to bring together all the projects you want to work with in one place, so you can't have multiple solutions in one instance. You'd have to open each solution separately.