I want to share a real time scenario which I faced in Visual Studio 2013. Suppose we have made some changes in .cs files from outside the application i.e. not modified from Visual Studio 2013.

Let say I modified 50-100 files using Beyond Compare or replaced some data in files (e.g. assemblyinfo.cs) using TexRep then If I want to check in those files in TFS then I cannot see it in pending changes.

So the issue is I am not able to view files checked-out in pending changes list which I have modified from outside the source editor. Visual Studio 2013/2015 will not detect it.
But in Visual Studio 2010 I use to do this activity. In Visual Studio 2010 I use to this in following steps:

Visual Studio 2010 TFS Check-out files modified from outside

  1. Take the solution offline and close it.
  2. Make changes from outside (using Beyond Compare, TexRep, NotePad++ etc)
  3. Open solution and go online it will scan the changes made offline and open a pop-up displaying list of files modified. But in Visual Studio 2013 it is not available. To resolve this I have done following things.

Visual Studio 2013/2015 TFS Check-out files modified from outside

In TEAM menu no option available for taking solution offline.

So I have resolved this issue by installing a Visual Studio Extension.
  • Go to Tools menu --> Extensions and update
  • Click on online option and search for TFS go offline.

Download & install this extension. It will ask to restart the Visual Studio. Restart it. You can see that now this feature is available in TEAM menu.



To go offline click on it. Now it will be offline.


Now to go online on TFS click on File Menuà Source Control à Go Online