How do I undo “Scope to this” in Visual Studio 2012?

347
votes

In the Solution Explorer, I clicked on "Scope to this" to display only a part of the solution. Now I can't find how to get back to normal view.

Closing/Reopening Solution Explorer won't work; I searched every menu item, and "New Solution Explorer View" didn't work either; I found nothing on Google.

I must be missing something obvious... There has to be an easy way to undo "Scope to this", right?

2
visual-studio-2012
Oops, I finally found it... Just click the "Home" icon on the Solution Explorer. I suppose my question was stupid and should be deleted. – Eldritch Conundrum
No it was not. I was looking for this and your comment helped me. Sometimes the most obvious things are easy to miss. Anyway, reposting your comment as an answer so this question is properly answered. – ThiefMaster
Me too. Some of the UI design for the new MS paradigm is crazy counter-intuitive. I'm not the only one who could only shut down their fancy new Windows 8 machine from alt+f4 at the desktop for a couple weeks... – Talonj
Three years later and this is still a horrible design by the Visual Studio team. Thank the gods for SO. – invert
This is a good question, and terrible UI design. If you "do" something through a context menu, I would expect to be able to "undo" that something through the same context menu and not have to go hunting for hieroglyphics. +1 – DVK

2 Answers

536
votes

Click the "Home" icon (third one by default, the one with a house pictogram) in the Solution explorer. This will revert the view to the full solution.

28
votes

In addition to pressing the 'home' button you should also see, in the top left hand corner of the Solution Explorer, two arrows.

Pressing the left pointing one will take you back out of scope to this and pressing the right one will put you back into it.

Essentially, they work as forward and back buttons.

Extra:

You can also right click on projects and select 'New Solution Explorer Window' to have two separate solution explorers which can browse independently (note that changing the settings on one will effect the other).