Class always tries to open in Design View, not Code View

Question

I have a class named Print.cs that always stubbornly opens in Design View, when I need to see its Code View (F7). It also has a different icon to the rest of my classes in the Solution Explorer.

I've looked in the Properties and can't see anything relevant. I've also tried deleting and re-creating the class, but the icon comes back.

How can I force Print.cs to always open in Code View?

_{(Click to enlarge)}

NB: disregard the green squiggly line, it's just a warning that unreachable code was detected.

Can you show the definition of the class? I guess it is inheriting from Component or something like that — Juan, Mar 18 '15 at 14:16
So yes, it inherits from Component... so not sure if you can avoid that. Maybe instead of extending PrintDocument you can try to do some composition instead? — Juan, Mar 18 '15 at 14:48
See [Disable designer in Visual Studio?](http://stackoverflow.com/a/602589/719186). Ignore the accepted answer, read the second paragraph of the highest voted answer. — LarsTech, Mar 18 '15 at 14:50

score 15 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 18 '15 at 17:31

15

Taken from the suggestions from @LarsTech and @OrkunBekar, since neither posted this as an answer - this works:

[System.ComponentModel.DesignerCategory("Code")]

Added between the namespace and the class, e.g.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
...

namespace POS
{

    [System.ComponentModel.DesignerCategory("Code")]

    public class Print : PrintDocument
    {
        ...
    }
}

answered Mar 18 '15 at 17:31

Danny Beckett

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As a side note after you open the file once you can remove the decoration from the class and it will still open up in code view. At least I could. – Chad Aug 30 '17 at 16:42
@Chad I cannot confirm this behavior. It opened properly at first. But then sometimes later it stopped working and I had to add [System.ComponentModel.DesignerCategory("Code")] again. – Maxter Jul 30 '18 at 14:48

score 8 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 18 '15 at 14:51

8

Try right click on the file -> Open With -> CSharp Editor (remember to set it as default).

answered Mar 18 '15 at 14:51

kha

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score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Apr 02 '18 at 05:21

Funny enough, it was totally other thing in my case. If the filename equal (=) to the first class in it, then Visual Studio decides it is a simple C# file. If you have 2 classes and the first is not equal to the file name, then the solution icon changes and default editor is designer.

score 1 · Answer 4 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:00

1

I don't know if you have same conditions in that link but opening your class in notepad, changing codes, replacing file then building the solution again may fix the problem.

edited May 23 '17 at 12:00

Community

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answered Mar 18 '15 at 14:37

Orkun Bekar

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Class always tries to open in Design View, not Code View

4 Answers4