Hi,

How do you open your projects? Do you double click in windows explorer or use the visual studio menus such as recent list, file>open, file open arduino etc.?

Thanks

The visual micro bars will show when you are editing visual micro code or have an arduino project selected in the solution explorer.

You should not use "File > Open > File." it simply opens files and not projects. Visual Micro has some intelligence to detect when an arduino .ino is being opened. If a solution is not open then an arduino project will be created or opened. So really it's to create new arduino projects or quickly review unrelated arduino code when editing an existing project. 

The "vMicro" menu gives you shortcuts to Open or Create a project. 
"File>Open>Project" or "File>Open>Arduino Project" are good ways to open existing project.
File>Recent>Projects can be useful but you need to use "File>Open>Project" or "File>>New>Project" for entries to appear in the recent Project list.

Let's first make sure you are seeing the right things on screen so you can understand what you are working with.

Do you have the "Solution Explorer" open all the time so that you can see the project and source code file names?

Can you give screen shot of ide when a project is open?

Okay it's good to keep the solution explorer open on the right.

You can use "File>Close Solution" to close the current project.

For beginners there should be one project/solution for each arduino sketch. An arduino project can have multiple .ino files but it is considered a single program.

If you open the Blink example this will be one project. The LED example will be a different project.

You can have multiple projects open in a single solution but for new users it is best to close the solution if you want to open a different arduino project.

When Visual Micro creates an arduino project from .ino and cpp code it becomes a standard Visual Studio project and an Arduino project. This means that after a project has been created it can be opened more easily than finding the .ino file

You can see a few examples in the First Steps section of the documentation http://www.visualmicro.com/page/User-Guide.aspx?doc=index

I followed the tutorial, but still am confused about CLOSE, Close Project, and Save ALL.

And, the solutions i saved does not show in RECENT, nor is it in solution explorer.

Is there a way for VS to remember all my solutions, such that i can quickly move from one to another?