Visual Studio: Change Project Path

Microsoft Visual Studio doesn’t make it very easy to change the project path for your development project. We came up with our own solution though. Hopefully this tutorial works for you.

1. Save and close the project if you have it open.

2. Navigate to the location where your project is stored using Windows File Explorer.

3. Move all of the project files to the new location. In this example, I am moving my project from a folder at C:\Users\mbartlett\source\repos\ConsoleApp2 to C:\Users\mbartlett\source\repos\MyNewFolder.

4. Right-click the solution file (.SLN), then select “Edit with Notepad“.

5. Change the line (usually line 6) that starts with “Project” to reflect the path you wish to use. For example, if I want to change the path of my ConsoleApp2 project from “ConsoleApp2\ConsoleApp2.vbproj” to “MyNewFolder\ConsoleApp2.vbproj” I would make these changes to that line:

Project("{F184B08F-C81C-45F6-A57F-5ABD9991F28F}") = "ConsoleApp2", "ConsoleApp2\ConsoleApp2.vbproj", "{AFEA4FB5-B58A-498F-99A6-076B6F56601A}"

to

Project("{F184B08F-C81C-45F6-A57F-5ABD9991F28F}") = "ConsoleApp2", "MyNewFolder\ 
 ConsoleApp2.vbproj", "{AFEA4FB5-B58A-498F-99A6-076B6F56601A}

6. Now save your changes and close Notepad.

7. Open the project folder from its new location, then double-click it to open the project file (vbproj, cproj, etc). The project will open as normal and you should now be able to modify the project in its new location.