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Sometimes I see the shortcut sometimes I don't. I'm not sure why.

How can I make the shortcut permanent?

Butzke
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Syaiful Nizam Yahya
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3 Answers3

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I believe I have an answer. It worked for me flawlessly. After being frustrated, I wrote to MS through the Feedback option in VS2013 (at the top). A week later, one of their employees responded with this:

Hi,

Thanks for raising this issue to us through the Visual Studio Feedback program. I am interested in helping investigate the issue you’ve described. After creating a new WPF app in Visual Studio 2013 RTM, I was able to reproduce the issue you’ve described. By default, .xaml files do not have the “Open in Blend…” command enabled in the context menu in the Solution Explorer. However, I was able to successfully add this command in both VB and C# WPF projects in VS 2013. It sounds like you might have also tried this method, but please try the steps below and see if you are able to successfully add the command. I hope that step #6 might be the trick in successfully enabling the command for you. In order to add this command, I followed these steps:

  1. Tools > Customize
  2. Select Context Menu radio button
  3. From the Dropdown, choose “Project and Solution Context Menus | Item”
  4. Click the “Add Command…” button
  5. Select View category
  6. Select the third (bottom-most) “Open in Blend…” command (there should be three available)
  7. Close dialogs
  8. Right click MainWindow.xaml
  9. Select “Open in Blend…” (it should not be grayed out)

Of the three “Open in Blend…” commands available, the third one is the only one which successfully worked on .xaml files in WPF projects. The other two would be grayed out when I tried to use them. Please contact me to let me know if you are able to successfully add the command or if you still see the issue. I look forward to your response, and I hope that this will successfully resolve your issue!

Thank you,

Scott Rick

I am impressed by the fact that he gave much consideration to this issue and actually tested several methods. In my case, there were two "Open in Blend..." items, so I chose the second one and it worked flawlessly.

Hope it works for you as well.

B.K.
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    I had this command in the context menu (win store 8.1 xaml app) but seems to have disappeared with either azure SDK installation, or a win update recently (like last week or so) annoying, and for some reason I have only one "Open in Blend..." item as above, which is greyed out and disabled when I add it to the menu. Maybe it'll come back with another update ;( – MemeDeveloper Apr 09 '14 at 12:32
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    It worked, thanks! But does anyone know why? Sometimes it randomly disappears and I just re-enable it. But I have to choose the second or first one some times to get it to work. – Ebsan Oct 30 '14 at 23:49
  • @WiteCastle That happens to me, but very rarely. I am able to solve it by starting Blend on its own and then closing it. When I do that, Blend option becomes available. I'm not sure why that works or what the cause is. – B.K. Oct 31 '14 at 05:22
  • I tried 2, 3 then 1 (which worked) Random (for reals) – CAD bloke Jan 14 '15 at 09:55
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    I have a few installations of Visual Studio and it is different (1,2 or 3) on each one. Related: if I could upvote this every time I return to it you'd be beating @JonSkeet by now – CAD bloke Feb 18 '15 at 23:05
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    @CADbloke Only JonSkeet can beat JonSkeet. – B.K. Feb 19 '15 at 04:25
  • Following this route I get the error (within Blend) `page is not supported in a Windows Phone project` though the workaround (from TJ Mullen's answer [here](https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/forums/windowsapps/en-us/03bd5f93-e7b8-4d4d-a368-62d213109162/blend-page-is-not-supported-in-a-windows-app-project)) is to instead open the solution from within Blend and give up on the Visual Studio context menu. – dumbledad Mar 11 '15 at 08:00
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    @dumbledad This is definitely not a catch-all solution... I'm hoping they'll fix it in the new VS. I've had times where the context option would not show up at all until I would start up `Blend` on its own. I could then close `Blend` and the menu option would still be available. It would be a good convenient option if they fix it completely, but it's not a dealbreaker for me, since VS is a pretty spectacular IDE. – B.K. Mar 11 '15 at 08:09
  • Does this have anything to do with the type of project you have open? I usually have to do this for my WPF projects but not my WinRT apps. – Ebsan Mar 25 '15 at 00:41
  • @WiteCastle Not sure, I haven't tested this on Windows 8. – B.K. Mar 25 '15 at 03:36
  • For me Visual Studio crashes at step 7. I don't think I have Blend installed at all; I can't find it anywhere. – hypehuman Jun 01 '16 at 13:53
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    saved my day.. Thanks much.. :) – Guruprasad J Rao Jul 07 '16 at 13:30
  • I had three "Open with Blend"s as in the quote. The third one worked, the second was greyed out. – Arctic Vowel Jan 04 '17 at 12:46
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You can customize it:

Keyboard Shortcut: how to

Integration in context menu:

  • Tools->Customize
  • Click on Commands tab
  • Click on Context menu and choose "Project and Solution Context Menus | Item
  • Click on Add Command
  • Select View as Category
  • Select 'Open in Blend' command

You get this context menu option now for every item but that should not hurt...

Marco
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    As @B.K. notes below, there are multiple "Open in Blend..." commands - chosing the 2nd one also worked for me for WPF applications. – lightw8 Jul 02 '14 at 19:00
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When working on a Silverlight, Windows Phone or Windows Store app project, you can use the View -> Open in Blend command to open your current active tab/code XAML window in Blend.

The above menu choice is not available for WPF apps only. No idea why.

Scott Wylie
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  • When my current tab is MainWindow.xaml, there is no View->Open in Blend. When I right click MainWindow.xaml, there is no Open in Blend. Just tried that in C# Wpf application. – Syaiful Nizam Yahya Nov 06 '13 at 10:03
  • If its not available in WPF apps, in what apps its available? – Syaiful Nizam Yahya Nov 07 '13 at 01:41
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    It's normally there in Silverlight apps, but I found this thread because this morning it isn't... – john_cat Dec 06 '13 at 09:35
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    It's back today. I have no idea why. In fact, the option appears 3 times on my VIEW menu, with one or more ghosted out, depending on the type of file I've got active. – john_cat Jan 14 '14 at 11:58