Miscellaneous Files Project
Applies to: 
Visual Studio 
Visual Studio for Mac
Note
This article applies to Visual Studio 2017. If you're looking for the latest Visual Studio documentation, see Visual Studio documentation. We recommend upgrading to the latest version of Visual Studio. Download it here
When a user opens project items, the IDE assigns to the Miscellaneous Files project any items that are not members of any projects in a solution.
Projects play a significant role in determining which editor is used when a user opens a project item. A project can be designed to open certain files by using a project-specific editor or a standard editor.
A project-specific editor typically requires that the user have special knowledge or use special interfaces from the project. For more information, see How to: Open Project-Specific Editors.
A standard editor can open any file of a specific extension in any project. The user can customize some standard editors, such as the Visual Studio text editor, for projects but still retain their public character. Standard editors are created by using the OpenStandardEditor method.
If no project in the solution responds that it can open a project item, the IDE provides a special project called the Miscellaneous Files project that opens any file.
This special project provides for opening of a file outside the context of a project. During the processing of the OpenDocumentViaProject method, the Miscellaneous Files project always responds with a very low priority. Therefore, the Miscellaneous Files project always yields to any higher-priority project that can open files.
The Miscellaneous Files project does not require the user to explicitly create it with the New Project dialog box. Also, the Miscellaneous Files project does not permanently manage a list of project members. It uses an optional feature to record a list of most recently used files for each user.