Streamlining Your Workflow: Adding a Toolbox in Visual Studio 2019

As a developer, you may often find yourself repeating the same pieces of code. Thankfully, Visual Studio 2019 offers a solution to this problem by allowing you to add specific toolboxes to your development environment. Here’s how to do it:

Adding a Toolbox

1. Open your project in Visual Studio 2019.
2. Navigate to the “View” menu and select “Other Windows” and then “Toolbox.” This will open the Toolbox panel.
3. In the Toolbox panel, right-click and select “Add Tab.” Give the new tab a name that reflects the tools you plan to add to it.
4. With the new tab selected, right-click in the panel and select “Choose Items.”
5. In the “Choose Toolbox Items” window that appears, select the “.NET Framework Components” tab.
6. Here, you can check the box next to the tools you want to include in your Toolbox. As you select each tool, it will appear in the “Selected Items” list.
7. Once you’ve chosen all the tools you want to include, click OK. Your chosen tools will now appear in the Toolbox panel under the new tab you created.

Adding Custom Tools to the Toolbox

If you’re working with custom tools, you’ll need to add the .dll file that contains the tools to your project before they’ll be available in the Toolbox. Here’s how to do it:

1. Right-click your project in the Solution Explorer and select “Add” and then “Existing Item.”
2. Navigate to the .dll file you want to add and select “Add.”
3. Once you’ve added the file, follow the same steps as above to add your custom tools to the Toolbox.

Customizing the Toolbox

You can also customize the order in which tools appear in the Toolbox. To do this, select the tab you want to customize and right-click on a tool. You can then sort the tools alphabetically or move them up or down in the list. You can also group related tools by topic by right-clicking on the tab and selecting “Add Separator.”

In Conclusion

Adding a Toolbox to your Visual Studio 2019 environment can greatly increase your productivity by providing quick access to frequently used tools. By following the steps outlined above, you can easily add both built-in and custom tools to your Toolbox, customize the order of your tools, and group related tools by topic. Happy coding!