Viewing a project's contents

 

The Project Manager displays the contents of your current project group and any project it contains. It allows you to navigate among various projects and the projects’ constituent files. You can perform project management tasks using its toolbar and context (right-click) menus.

To display the Project Manager:

1.         Open a project.

2.         Choose View|Project Manager.

To view a unit, form or other file, double-click it. It is displayed in the Code editor.

The Project Manager gives you a high-level view of the projects contained in a project group, and of the form, unit files, resource, object, and library files contained in the project file.

Many commands are available by selecting an item in the Project Manager and right-clicking to display a Project Manager context menu. You can use the Project Manager to open, add, save, and remove project files. You can also use the Project Manager to access the Project Options dialog box, which lets you configure your default project settings. 

You can also add additional types of files to your project (using drag and drop or Project|Add to Project) and view them in the editor as text files. You can also add resource files, and they are compiled into resource files and linked when you compile the project.

The Project Manager is an invaluable tool if you share files among different projects because it lets you quickly find each file in the project (see Adding existing forms and units to a project and Sharing objects). It is also useful when backing up all the files in your project (see Backing up a project).

Certain operations, such as commands available on context menus, operate on the active project. The active project is the one that is highlighted in bold in the Project Manager and is the project you are currently working on. The active project is also shown in the project selector which is the top left of the Project Manager. See Selecting a project to work on.

To make a project the active project:

1.         Display the Project Manager.

2.         Select the project you want to make active and click Activate.

When you view a project item, such as a form or source code, the Project Manager automatically makes the project it belongs to the active project. Projects you select using the project selector automatically become the active project.