How do you configure an OpenFileDialog to select folders

Question

In VS  NET  when you are selecting a folder for a project  a dialog that looks like an OpenFileDialog or SaveFileDialog is displayed  but is set up to accept only folders   Ever since I ve seen this I ve wanted to know how it s done   I am aware of the FolderBrowserDialog  but I ve never really liked that dialog   It starts too small and doesn t let me take advantage of being able to type a path   I m almost certain by now there s not a way to do this from  NET  but I m just as curious how you do it from unmanaged code as well   Short of completely reimplementing the dialog from scratch  how do you modify the dialog to have this behavior   I d also like to restate that I am aware of the FolderBrowserDialog but sometimes I don t like to use it  in addition to being genuinely curious how to configure a dialog in this manner   Telling me to just use the FolderBrowserDialog helps me maintain a consistent UI experience but doesn t satisfy my curiosity so it won t count as an answer   It s not a Vista-specific thing either  I ve been seeing this dialog since VS  NET 2003  so it is doable in Win2k and WinXP   This is less of a  I want to know the proper way to do this  question and more of a  I have been curious about this since I first wanted to do it in VS 2003  question   I understand that Vista s file dialog has an option to do this  but it s been working in XP so I know they did something to get it to work   Vista-specific answers are not answers  because Vista doesn t exist in the question context   Update  I m accepting Scott Wisniewski s answer because it comes with a working sample  but I think Serge deserves credit for pointing to the dialog customization  which is admittedly nasty from  NET but it does work  and Mark Ransom for figuring out that MS probably rolled a custom dialog for this task

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There is the Windows API Code Pack  It s got a lot of shell related stuff  including the CommonOpenFileDialog class  in the Microsoft WindowsAPICodePack Dialogs namespace   This is the perfect solution - the usual open dialog with only folders displayed   Here is an example of how to use it   CommonOpenFileDialog cofd   new CommonOpenFileDialog    cofd IsFolderPicker   true  cofd ShowDialog        Unfortunately Microsoft no longer ships this package  but several people have unofficially uploaded binaries to NuGet  One example can be found here  This package is just the shell-specific stuff  Should you need it  the same user has several other packages which offer more functionality present in the original package

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The Ookii Dialogs for WPF library has a class that provides an implementation of a folder browser dialog for WPF   https   github com augustoproiete ookii-dialogs-wpf   There s also a version that works with Windows Forms

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I know the question was on configuration of OpenFileDialog but seeing that Google brought me here i may as well point out that if you are ONLY looking for folders you should be using a FolderBrowserDialog Instead as answered by another SO question below  How to specify path using open file dialog in vb net

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You can subclass the file dialog and gain access to all its controls  Each has an identifier that can be used to obtain its window handle  You can then show and hide them  get messages from them about selection changes etc  etc  It all depends how much effort you want to take   We did ours using WTL class support and customized the file dialog to include a custom places bar and plug-in COM views   MSDN provides information on how to do this using Win32  this CodeProject article includes an example  and this CodeProject article provides a  NET example

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On Vista you can use IFileDialog with FOS PICKFOLDERS option set  That will cause display of OpenFileDialog-like window where you can select folders   var frm    IFileDialog  new FileOpenDialogRCW     uint options  frm GetOptions out options   options    FOS PICKFOLDERS  frm SetOptions options    if  frm Show owner Handle     S OK        IShellItem shellItem      frm GetResult out shellItem       IntPtr pszString      shellItem GetDisplayName SIGDN FILESYSPATH  out pszString       this Folder   Marshal PtrToStringAuto pszString       For older Windows you can always resort to trick with selecting any file in folder   Working example that works on  NET Framework 2 0 and later can be found here

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You can use code like this   The filter is hide files  The filename is hide first text   To advanced hide of textbox for filename you need to look at  OpenFileDialogEx  The code         openFileDialog2 FileName     r       openFileDialog1 Filter    folders   neverseenthisfile       openFileDialog1 CheckFileExists   false      openFileDialog1 CheckPathExists   false

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You can use code like this  The filter is empty string  The filename is AnyName but not blank          openFileDialog FileName    AnyFile           openFileDialog Filter   string Empty          openFileDialog CheckFileExists   false          openFileDialog CheckPathExists   false

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Exact Audio Copy works this way on Windows XP   The standard file open dialog is shown  but the filename field contains the text  Filename will be ignored    Just guessing here  but I suspect the string is injected into the combo box edit control every time a significant change is made to the dialog  As long as the field isn t blank  and the dialog flags are set to not check the existence of the file  the dialog can be closed normally   Edit  this is much easier than I thought   Here s the code in C   MFC  you can translate it to the environment of your choice   CFileDialog dlg true  NULL   Filename will be ignored   OFN HIDEREADONLY   OFN NOVALIDATE   OFN PATHMUSTEXIST   OFN READONLY  NULL  this   dlg DoModal      Edit 2  This should be the translation to C   but I m not fluent in C  so don t shoot me if it doesn t work   OpenFileDialog openFileDialog1   new OpenFileDialog     openFileDialog1 FileName    Filename will be ignored   openFileDialog1 CheckPathExists   true  openFileDialog1 ShowReadOnly   false  openFileDialog1 ReadOnlyChecked   true  openFileDialog1 CheckFileExists   false  openFileDialog1 ValidateNames   false   if openFileDialog1 ShowDialog      DialogResult OK           openFileDialog1 FileName should contain the folder and a dummy filename     Edit 3  Finally looked at the actual dialog in question  in Visual Studio 2005  I didn t have access to it earlier   It is not the standard file open dialog  If you inspect the windows in Spy   and compare them to a standard file open  you ll see that the structure and class names don t match  When you look closely  you can also spot some differences between the contents of the dialogs  My conclusion is that Microsoft completely replaced the standard dialog in Visual Studio to give it this capability  My solution or something similar will be as close as you can get  unless you re willing to code your own from scratch

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I assume you re on Vista using VS2008  In that case I think that the FOS PICKFOLDERS option is being used when calling the Vista file dialog IFileDialog  I m afraid that in  NET code this would involve plenty of gnarly P Invoke interop code to get working

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I have a dialog that I wrote called an OpenFileOrFolder dialog that allows you to open either a folder or a file   If you set its AcceptFiles value to false  then it operates in only accept folder mode   You can download the source from GitHub here

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The Ookii Dialogs package contains a managed wrapper around the new  Vista-style  folder browser dialog  It also degrades gracefully on older operating systems   Ookii Dialogs for WPF targetting  NET 4 5 and available on NuGet Ookii Dialogs for Windows Forms targetting  NET 4 5 and available on NuGet

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After hours of searching I found this answer by leetNightShade to a working solution   There are three things I believe make this solution much better than all the others    It is simple to use   It only requires you include two files  which can be combined to one anyway  in your project  It falls back to the standard FolderBrowserDialog when used on XP or older systems  The author grants permission to use the code for any purpose you deem fit      There   s no license as such as you are free to take and do with the code what you will     Download the code here

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Try this one from Codeproject  credit to Nitron    I think it s the same dialog you re talking about - maybe it would help if you add a screenshot   bool GetFolder std  string amp  folderpath  const char  szCaption NULL  HWND hOwner NULL        bool retVal   false          The BROWSEINFO struct tells the shell how it should display the dialog      BROWSEINFO bi      memset  amp bi  0  sizeof bi         bi ulFlags     BIF USENEWUI      bi hwndOwner   hOwner      bi lpszTitle   szCaption          must call this if using BIF USENEWUI       OleInitialize NULL           Show the dialog and get the itemIDList for the selected folder      LPITEMIDLIST pIDL     SHBrowseForFolder  amp bi        if pIDL    NULL                   Create a buffer to store the path  then get the path          char buffer  MAX PATH       0            if   SHGetPathFromIDList pIDL  buffer     0                           Set the string value              folderpath   buffer              retVal   true                               free the item id list         CoTaskMemFree pIDL                OleUninitialize         return retVal

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OK  let me try to connect the first dot  -  Playing a little bit with Spy   or Winspector shows that the Folder textbox in the VS Project Location is a customization of the standard dialog  It s not the same field as the filename textbox in a standard file dialog such as the one in Notepad   From there on  I figure  VS hides the filename and filetype textboxes comboboxes and uses a custom dialog template to add its own part in the bottom of the dialog   EDIT  Here s an example of such customization and how to do it  in Win32  not  NET    m ofn is the OPENFILENAME struct that underlies the file dialog  Add these 2 lines     m ofn lpTemplateName   MAKEINTRESOURCE IDD FILEDIALOG IMPORTXLIFF     m ofn Flags    OFN ENABLETEMPLATE    where IDD FILEDIALOG IMPORTXLIFF is a custom dialog template that will be added in the bottom of the dialog  See the part in red below     source  apptranslator com     In this case  the customized part is only a label   an hyperlink but it could be any dialog  It could contain an OK button that would let us validate folder only selection   But how we would get rid of some of the controls in the standard part of the dialog  I don t know   More detail in this MSDN article

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First Solution  I developed this as a cleaned up version of  NET Win 7-style folder select dialog by Bill Seddon of lyquidity com  I have no affiliation    I learned of his code from another answer on this page   I wrote my own because his solution requires an additional Reflection class that isn t needed for this focused purpose  uses exception-based flow control  doesn t cache the results of its reflection calls  Note that the nested static VistaDialog class is so that its static reflection variables don t try to get populated if the Show method is never called  It falls back to the pre-Vista dialog if not in a high enough Windows version  Should work in Windows 7  8  9  10 and higher  theoretically    using System  using System Reflection  using System Windows Forms   namespace ErikE Shuriken            lt summary gt          Present the Windows Vista-style open file dialog to select a folder  Fall back for older Windows Versions          lt  summary gt      public class FolderSelectDialog           private string  initialDirectory          private string  title          private string  fileName                public string InitialDirectory               get   return string IsNullOrEmpty  initialDirectory    Environment CurrentDirectory    initialDirectory                set    initialDirectory   value                      public string Title               get   return  title     Select a folder                 set    title   value                      public string FileName   get   return  fileName               public bool Show     return Show IntPtr Zero                   lt param name  hWndOwner  gt Handle of the control or window to be the parent of the file dialog lt  param gt               lt returns gt true if the user clicks OK lt  returns gt          public bool Show IntPtr hWndOwner                var result   Environment OSVersion Version Major  gt   6                   VistaDialog Show hWndOwner  InitialDirectory  Title                    ShowXpDialog hWndOwner  InitialDirectory  Title                fileName   result FileName              return result Result                     private struct ShowDialogResult               public bool Result   get  set                public string FileName   get  set                       private static ShowDialogResult ShowXpDialog IntPtr ownerHandle  string initialDirectory  string title                var folderBrowserDialog   new FolderBrowserDialog                   Description   title                  SelectedPath   initialDirectory                  ShowNewFolderButton   false                            var dialogResult   new ShowDialogResult                if  folderBrowserDialog ShowDialog new WindowWrapper ownerHandle      DialogResult OK                    dialogResult Result   true                  dialogResult FileName   folderBrowserDialog SelectedPath                            return dialogResult                     private static class VistaDialog               private const string c foldersFilter    Folders  n                private const BindingFlags c flags   BindingFlags Instance   BindingFlags Public   BindingFlags NonPublic              private readonly static Assembly s windowsFormsAssembly   typeof FileDialog  Assembly              private readonly static Type s iFileDialogType   s windowsFormsAssembly GetType  System Windows Forms FileDialogNative IFileDialog                private readonly static MethodInfo s createVistaDialogMethodInfo   typeof OpenFileDialog  GetMethod  CreateVistaDialog   c flags               private readonly static MethodInfo s onBeforeVistaDialogMethodInfo   typeof OpenFileDialog  GetMethod  OnBeforeVistaDialog   c flags               private readonly static MethodInfo s getOptionsMethodInfo   typeof FileDialog  GetMethod  GetOptions   c flags               private readonly static MethodInfo s setOptionsMethodInfo   s iFileDialogType GetMethod  SetOptions   c flags               private readonly static uint s fosPickFoldersBitFlag    uint  s windowsFormsAssembly                  GetType  System Windows Forms FileDialogNative FOS                    GetField  FOS PICKFOLDERS                    GetValue null               private readonly static ConstructorInfo s vistaDialogEventsConstructorInfo   s windowsFormsAssembly                  GetType  System Windows Forms FileDialog VistaDialogEvents                    GetConstructor c flags  null  new     typeof FileDialog     null               private readonly static MethodInfo s adviseMethodInfo   s iFileDialogType GetMethod  Advise                private readonly static MethodInfo s unAdviseMethodInfo   s iFileDialogType GetMethod  Unadvise                private readonly static MethodInfo s showMethodInfo   s iFileDialogType GetMethod  Show                 public static ShowDialogResult Show IntPtr ownerHandle  string initialDirectory  string title                    var openFileDialog   new OpenFileDialog                       AddExtension   false                      CheckFileExists   false                      DereferenceLinks   true                      Filter   c foldersFilter                      InitialDirectory   initialDirectory                      Multiselect   false                      Title   title                                     var iFileDialog   s createVistaDialogMethodInfo Invoke openFileDialog  new object                         s onBeforeVistaDialogMethodInfo Invoke openFileDialog  new     iFileDialog                     s setOptionsMethodInfo Invoke iFileDialog  new object      uint  s getOptionsMethodInfo Invoke openFileDialog  new object          s fosPickFoldersBitFlag                     var adviseParametersWithOutputConnectionToken   new     s vistaDialogEventsConstructorInfo Invoke new object     openFileDialog     0U                    s adviseMethodInfo Invoke iFileDialog  adviseParametersWithOutputConnectionToken                    try                       int retVal    int  s showMethodInfo Invoke iFileDialog  new object     ownerHandle                         return new ShowDialogResult                           Result   retVal    0                          FileName   openFileDialog FileName                                                          finally                       s unAdviseMethodInfo Invoke iFileDialog  new     adviseParametersWithOutputConnectionToken 1                                                            Wrap an IWin32Window around an IntPtr         private class WindowWrapper   IWin32Window               private readonly IntPtr  handle              public WindowWrapper IntPtr handle     handle   handle                public IntPtr Handle   get   return  handle                          It is used like so in a Windows Form   var dialog   new FolderSelectDialog       InitialDirectory   musicFolderTextBox Text      Title    Select a folder to import music from     if  dialog Show Handle         musicFolderTextBox Text   dialog FileName      You can of course play around with its options and what properties it exposes  For example  it allows multiselect in the Vista-style dialog   Second Solution  Simon Mourier gave an answer that shows how to do the exact same job using interop against the Windows API directly  though his version would have to be supplemented to use the older style dialog if in an older version of Windows  Unfortunately  I hadn t found his post yet when I worked up my solution  Name your poison

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Better to use the FolderBrowserDialog  for that      using  FolderBrowserDialog dlg   new FolderBrowserDialog          dlg Description    Select a folder       if  dlg ShowDialog      DialogResult OK                MessageBox Show  You selected      dlg SelectedPath

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You can use FolderBrowserDialogEx -  a re-usable derivative of the built-in FolderBrowserDialog   This one allows you to type in a path  even a UNC path   You can also browse for computers or printers with it   Works just like the built-in FBD  but     better     EDIT  I should have pointed out that this dialog can be set to select files or folders     Full Source code  one short C  module   Free   MS-Public license   Code to use it    var dlg1   new Ionic Utils FolderBrowserDialogEx    dlg1 Description    Select a folder to extract to    dlg1 ShowNewFolderButton   true  dlg1 ShowEditBox   true    dlg1 NewStyle   false  dlg1 SelectedPath   txtExtractDirectory Text  dlg1 ShowFullPathInEditBox   true  dlg1 RootFolder   System Environment SpecialFolder MyComputer      Show the FolderBrowserDialog  DialogResult result   dlg1 ShowDialog    if  result    DialogResult OK        txtExtractDirectory Text   dlg1 SelectedPath

[.net] How do you configure an OpenFileDialog to select folders?

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