While working in local mode, your local copies of the Web application files are protected from the changes made by other team members to the master Web application. You might want to explore the changes made by other Web developers. For example, others may have made changes to existing files or added new files to the master Web application.
If you want to get the latest file list from the master, you can refresh your project. If you want to get the latest versions of files that you already have locally, you can synchronize your local Web application with the master Web application. Also, if someone has enabled source control on the Web project since you last opened the project, you need to refresh your project to take advantage of the source control features.
To get changes to the project structure
The file list in the Project Explorer and local read-only files are updated to reflect the current state of the application on the master server. Although the Project Explorer view changes, write-enabled copies of local files are not changed even if the master version of that file has been changed.
For example, if you have a local copy of a write-enabled file that was deleted from the master application, your local copy remains as it was before the refresh. However, read-only copies of local files are updated to reflect any changes made on the master server. For example, such changes as newer versions, deleted files, and renamed files are made locally.
Note Refreshing the project view does not place new local copies of write-enabled files on your machine. For information about getting the latest versions of files, see Synchronizing Master and Local Files.
You might want to get updated files from the master server, but not the entire Web application. You can synchronize your local version of specific files with the master version.
To get changed files