There used to be a drop down list to the left of the Build button that allowed me to select a port to use (e.g. COM33). That DDL disappeared several builds ago. I was able to work around this by selecting the port in the General menu, but now that no longer works either. It shows ports that are not connected ant tries to upload to COM4 which is not connected. So I can't upload anything any more.

I have tried adding a button for the port DDL, but there is no button in the list of buttons.

Hi, You are talking about the "Micro Communications" tool bar. It can be displayed  by right clicking an empty tool strip location and checking/ticking the "Micro Communications" tool bar. This will enable it all the time.

Alternatively there is a new vMicro>Tool bar auto visibility" menu that allows you to display specific tool bars automatically when an arduino project is open.

The default is for most tool bars not to be displayed because they cause VS2019 to load Visual Micro when VS might only need to be used for C# or non-arduino development. VS 2019 also included some other enforced changes which caused an early load of Visual Micro just before the new microsoft "Start window" displays the "recently used projects list", causing a slow experience for users.

The release notes do try to explain these things so worth a read some times.

Does this make sense?

As for the port list issue, did you reboot your pc?

Hi again Bob,

Sorry, you were right. Although what I have said above is correct there was a bug that prevented tool bar visibility state from being remembered. This would have meant that if auto toolbar visibility was NOT enabled and you had manually set a Toolbar to be visible, the bar would not appear after next ide re-start.

Please use the latest 1906.22 version from here https://www.visualmicro.com/forums/YaBB.pl?board=VS_ARDUINO_EXT_RELEASES