Are you opening directly or clicking the copy/clone option?

If you are opening directly and you used the windows installer to install arduino then we can be affected by windows permissions preventing both visual micro and visual studio from creating files for things like intellisense or creating projects or adding projects to solutions etc

The way to solve this is to either run vs with admin permissions or to use the zip from the arduino.cc download page and re-point the visual micro ide locations window to the location where you unpack the zip. 

One other point. If you want to alter examples then open a copy, visual micro will make a copy in "sketchbook/my examples".

Another option is to open the code of any example by clicking the code in the examples explorer instead of the example folder name. This will open a single code file without attempting to create a project. Allowing you to copy what you need into your own test projects.

Does this make sense?

I have no idea why the copy would fail to create a project and solution properly. I can test that when time allows..

As concerns saving the change, if you can come up with a better way to work then please feel free to describe it here. If you open a project in VS and make changes and then save those changes or build the project, then VS will save the changes.

I suspect that you simply wanted to open the source code without creating a project. That is also an option instead of copy. 

I await your enlightening golden nugget of wisdom 

Hi,

Visual Micro does not support the "file in memory" mode that works for some VS projects. Visual micro needs to write intellisense files otherwise vs intellisense doesn't work properly, so maybe that adds some confusion and causes VS to save the code.

Normally we have a sketch book folder for arduino which is used when using "File>Open>Arduino Project", "File>New>Arduino Project" and for cloned examples. VS has it's own location for new projects which is used when using "File>New>Project" and "File>Open>Project" etc. Therefore some users use the sketch book folder as a scratch pad for examples and junk, leaving the vs folders for the good stuff.

I thought about the issue with cloned examples. For the next release I plan to always make a unique folder name when cloning examples so you will then be able to open the same example multiple times.

Lastly don't forget you do not need to use the clone option for examples. You can simply browser the source code of any example without need to create a project. This is an easier way to work and mean you are editing/viewing the original example code that vs should less easily save

The example "Create Copy" method in the latest release uses the date time to create a new example.