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One of our clients has an old WinForms application that contains forms with a lot of controls on them. Some of those controls have a deep hierarchy and that makes it to hard to select them in the designer.

I need to understand this hierarchy to make modifications to the application to correct some bugs. Is there a way to see this hierarchy clearly? For example, is there something available that is similar to what can be seen in an .aspx source file when you have a breadcrumb of where you are in the HTML hierarchy (HTML > Body > div > etc.)? Or something more visual maybe?

DavidRR
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Cédric V
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3 Answers3

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You need to use the Document Outline

View > Other Windows > Document Outline

Or via hotkey

Ctl + ALT + T
mschr
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codingbadger
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    Who knew? This also answers the question: I need to make my existing form a page of a tab control, that is, I want to surround the existing form with a new tab control container. How do I do that? You create the tab control on your form then maneuver the up/down/left/right arrows in the Document Outline window until you've got the arrangement you want. – davidbak Mar 21 '16 at 17:36
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    Exactly what I am looking for! Thanks! – Legends Jun 20 '18 at 23:06
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    10 years of software development experince, and i was looking for this for 15 minutes :D – Numan Karaaslan Mar 21 '19 at 20:14
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    21 years of software development experience, and I've been looking for this for 2 minutes, then I came here :-) – Alex May 11 '21 at 17:38
  • 30 years of software development experience and I finally decided to check for how to do this in 1 minute. – Anders Lindén Aug 31 '22 at 06:11
17

Click on View > Other Windows > Document Outline in Visual Studio.

That should show the control hierarchy.

anonymous
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2

Visual Style Builder for UI Customization - Download this tool and use it...

Another tool is present which is "Control Spy Tool for Easier Development"

You will find the solution easily..