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Saving and Exporting Macros Files

Visual Studio Macros saves projects as a whole; you cannot save individual project items. This is an important difference from the Visual Studio integrated development environment (IDE), which prompts you to save the item to disk when you close a window.

Note

When you close a window in the Macros IDE, it does not prompt you to save the item, nor does it save the item automatically. When you close the application, it prompts you to save the changes.

Save As and Export Commands

In the Macros IDE, the SaveAs command is replaced by Export, which is available on both the File and shortcut menus. Export works only for module and class project items, and exports the project. Unlike SaveAs, it does not replace the current item with a new item that has the new name.

The host provides the default directory for exporting macros. Once you change the location, and if the operation is not canceled, Visual Studio Macros remembers the last saved-to location and then uses it as the default next time the Export File Dialog Box dialog box is displayed. This setting is not remembered between Visual Studio Macros sessions, however.

The file name defaults to the name of the project item as seen in Project Explorer, with a .vb suffix. Because reference items are not exportable, the command is not available for them.

Note

The Export command always exports projects to Unicode.

You can multi-select items before running Export. Visual Studio Macros displays the Export dialog for each selected exportable item. If an error occurs during an Export operation, or if you cancel the operation for any of the selected files, the entire action is cancelled.

See Also

Tasks

Modes in the Macros IDE

How to: Run Macros

Reference

Overview of the Macros IDE

Concepts

Debugging Macros