Undocking Parts of the Team Explorer in Visual Studio

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Did you know the Team Explorer splits into separate panes? It does, and it’s great for productivity. Read on and I’ll show you how to do it…

Visual Studio Layout

Everyone who uses Visual Studio on a regular basis has their own favorite setup for its numerous windows. For me, I like the Server Explorer and Source Control Explorer collapsed on the left and the Solution Explorer, Team Explorer, and Properties pane collapsed on the right.

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Notice that all the features of Team Explorer are accessible through only one tab


Team Explorer’s Internal Navigation

The Team Explorer pane contains several frequently-used features related to Source Control, TFS, and . That’s why I keep in collapsed on the right side of Visual Studio–for quick access. However, I do find that I’m having to use the navigation within Team Explorer a lot to get back-and-forth between its different features. Clicking on Builds to check on the status of a build, then the back button and Pending Changes to check-in a change.

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Undocking to the Rescue

All that navigation can get cumbersome, and for that reason I’m very pleased that Visual Studio allows me to “undock” Team Explorer’s individual features into separate window pane. To undock a feature from Team Explorer yourself, simply navigate to the feature and look for the arrow pointing to the top right in the corner near the top of the Team Explorer pane. Click the arrow, then following the normal steps to dock the window wherever you’d prefer to have it in your Visual Studio environment.

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This feature is available now in Visual Studio 2013, but it works exactly the same in Visual Studio 2015 as well.

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Now Pending Changes and Builds each have their own tabs