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I am having an unusual problem. I have always been able to drag files and folder from my desktop or explorer to the solution explorer in visual studio and add the files to my project. No when I attempt to drag files I simply get the "stop" symbol.

I am using Visual Studio 2008 running on Vista Home Premium 64 bit.

Any ideas?

Kent Fredric
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  • I experience the same behavior on Vista 64 Ultimate and VS 2008 though TBH I've never added files this way. – cfeduke Nov 06 '08 at 02:23
  • I just moved from Server 2008 (as a desktop) to Win7 x64 Ultimate and am now experiencing this same problem. I run VS2008 as Admin and have also tried running Explorer as Admin and Standard but no luck so far. – Guy Nov 11 '09 at 18:22
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    Looks like this is also being discussed on SuperUser: http://superuser.com/questions/59051/ – Guy Nov 11 '09 at 18:24

4 Answers4

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Windows will not let you drag from one window to another if only one of those windows is running as Administrator.

Are you running Visual Studio as Administrator?

In short : Run Visual Studio as Non Administrator.

Sampath
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Rob Paulsen
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    They really should display a message explaining why drag and drop is broken when you attempt it – Casebash Jul 06 '10 at 23:43
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    It didn't work when I ran both VS and Explorer as Administrator either. Only worked with both running as a non-Administrator. – axk Jun 05 '11 at 12:32
  • it randomly lets you do and sometimes does not. both as admin and non admin. – FlavorScape Aug 13 '13 at 20:53
  • For me, it didn't work when they were both set as Administrator and DID work when I set them both as non-Administrator. – TheCuBeMan Aug 06 '16 at 20:03
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You can't do this when your project is running. Is it?

tsilb
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I also cannot drop files from the explorer onto Visual Studio when it is running in admin mode.

But please try opening 'Add / Existing Item ... ' from the Solution Explorer / Manager context menu in Visual Studio and drag and drop files and folders from that window.

Works on my machine with Visual Studio 2012 ...

kuechlerm
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  • Excellent workaround! Works for me on Windows 8.1 with VS 2012, running as admin. – David Airapetyan Mar 12 '15 at 16:36
  • This should be higher. While yes you probably shouldn't run VS as Administrator if possible the top answer doesn't actually answer the question, this one does. – Chao Mar 27 '17 at 16:06
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I had the same issue and noticed I was pulling files from a folder that was compressed. I unzipped all the files and was able to drag and drop into the solutions explorer fine. Make sure your files are not in view mode in a compressed folder.

Joseph Shinaberry
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