Where is the shortcut “Open in Blend” in Visual Studio 2013?

Question

Sometimes I see the shortcut sometimes I don\'t. I\'m not sure why.

How can I make the shortcut permanent?

Answer 1

I believe I have an answer. It worked for me flawlessly. After being frustrated, I wrote to MS through the Feedback option in VS2013 (at the top). A week later, one of their employees responded with this:

Hi,

Thanks for raising this issue to us through the Visual Studio Feedback program. I am interested in helping investigate the issue you’ve described. After creating a new WPF app in Visual Studio 2013 RTM, I was able to reproduce the issue you’ve described. By default, .xaml files do not have the “Open in Blend…” command enabled in the context menu in the Solution Explorer. However, I was able to successfully add this command in both VB and C# WPF projects in VS 2013. It sounds like you might have also tried this method, but please try the steps below and see if you are able to successfully add the command. I hope that step #6 might be the trick in successfully enabling the command for you. In order to add this command, I followed these steps:

1. Tools > Customize
2. Select Context Menu radio button
3. From the Dropdown, choose “Project and Solution Context Menus | Item”
4. Click the “Add Command…” button
5. Select View category
6. Select the third (bottom-most) “Open in Blend…” command (there should be three available)
7. Close dialogs
8. Right click MainWindow.xaml
9. Select “Open in Blend…” (it should not be grayed out)

Of the three “Open in Blend…” commands available, the third one is the only one which successfully worked on .xaml files in WPF projects. The other two would be grayed out when I tried to use them. Please contact me to let me know if you are able to successfully add the command or if you still see the issue. I look forward to your response, and I hope that this will successfully resolve your issue!

Thank you,

Scott Rick

I am impressed by the fact that he gave much consideration to this issue and actually tested several methods. In my case, there were two "Open in Blend..." items, so I chose the second one and it worked flawlessly.

Hope it works for you as well.

Answer 2

You can customize it:

Keyboard Shortcut: how to

Integration in context menu:

• Tools->Customize
• Click on Commands tab
• Click on Context menu and choose "Project and Solution Context Menus | Item
• Click on Add Command
• Select View as Category
• Select 'Open in Blend' command

You get this context menu option now for every item but that should not hurt...

Answer 3

When working on a Silverlight, Windows Phone or Windows Store app project, you can use the View -> Open in Blend command to open your current active tab/code XAML window in Blend.

The above menu choice is not available for WPF apps only. No idea why.