VS 2005+

Creating Unsaved Visual Studio Projects

by Richard Carr, published at http://www.blackwasp.co.uk/VSUnsavedProjects.aspx

When you first start Visual Studio, you may be asked if to save your new project. Sometimes it is useful to be able to create a project temporarily without saving to disk. In Visual Studio 2005 and 2008, saving can be delayed using option configuration.

Visual Studio Configuration

The setting that controls whether new projects must be saved is configured using the standard Visual Studio options menu. This is also available for the Visual Studio Express Editions such as Microsoft C# Express or Visual Basic Express. To view the options dialog box, open the Tools menu and select Options from the list.

Show All Settings Mode

In some Visual Studio editions the standard options dialog box may be set to view a limited number of settings. If so, you will see only a small number of basic items for selection in the tree structure. To show all of the settings for Visual Studio, tick the Show all Settings checkbox at the bottom-left of the dialog. The advanced settings will appear.

Projects and Solutions Options

Once all of the settings are visible, click the "Projects and Solutions" branch of the tree to select it. Here you can see a list of all of Visual Studio's general settings for projects and solutions. The dialog box will be similar to that pictured below. To permit unsaved projects, remove the tick from the "Save new projects when created". Click the OK button to store the updated setting.

Now when a new project is created, you will not have to specify a file name and path. The project will remain temporary until you manually save it.

NB: Some actions, such as including multiple projects in a solution require that the solution be saved. In these scenarios, the development environment will prompt you for path and file name details accordingly.