The Outline view of a file that is open in the Visual Designer shows the contents of the Design Canvas and provides an alternative means of selecting, copying, deleting, renaming, and re-parenting controls. To display the Outline view if it is not open, select Window > Show View > Outline.

The Outline view shows a collapsible-expandable hierarchy of the top-level container (form or user control) and all of its controls in a tree structure. Each visual control appears as the child of its parent container. Non-visual controls appear below the tree at the same level as the base container.

Controls appear in the Outline view in the order in which you place them on the Design Canvas.

Selecting controls

You can select a control by clicking it in the tree, and you can use Ctrl+Click and Shift+Click to select multiple controls. Selecting controls in this way is equivalent to selecting them on the Design Canvas, and vice versa; the Visual Designer synchronizes the selection state between the Outline view and the Design Canvas.

In the case of complex forms, selecting items in the Outline view may be easier than selecting them directly on the Design Canvas. A complex design with a multi-level hierarchy of nested controls can make it difficult to select the controls visually.

Adding controls

As an alternative to placing a new control directly on the Design Canvas, you can select a control in the Toolbox and drag it to a container node in the Outline view. This is a useful technique if the target container is difficult to point to on the Design Canvas.

Re-parenting a control

If the form or user control includes at least one container control, you can re-parent another control - that is, make it the child of a different container - by clicking and dragging in the Outline view. Click the child control, hold down the primary mouse button, and drag the cursor so that it points to the node for the container that is to become the parent container. Then release the mouse button.

Using the context menu commands

You can select one or more controls in the Outline view and use the context (right-click) menu to cut, copy, paste, delete, or rename the selected items. (The Rename command is unavailable if more than one control is selected.)

Copying a container control copies all of its child controls as well.

When pasting, first select the target container and point to it while you right-click. If you use the Paste command without selecting a target container, the new control becomes a child of the top-level container.

Using the Undo and Redo commands

The Undo and Redo commands on the Edit menu are not available when the Outline view has focus. However, you can switch focus to the Design Canvas and then undo or redo a command that you executed in the Outline view.