How to REALLY Add or Delete a Task or a Container in a Control Flow in Visual Studio 2013

Ridiculous.

I was staring at Visual Studio 2013 in disbelief, looking at the empty Toolbox thinking I missed an installation step, even though all the other functionality of SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) was working just fine.

After doing a little digging (this time Stack Overflow did not help), it turns out that SSIS has its own dedicated Toolbox, and it’s basically hidden.

Thanks to an article by Robert Bigec, the answer is pretty simple, but not obvious.

The Empty Toolbox – SSIS 2012 | Robert’s Spout.ToString()

I stared at this toolbox in disbelief. White and spacious with a confirming message that gave me no comfort: “There are no usable controls in here … “. What happened to the Source Assistant? Where in the world is the Destination Assistant? Merge: gone! Data Conversion: gone! Forget about adding an Execute SQL Task, this is not happening! I guess, I’m not making any more Integration Services packages, unless I work on another computer, or go back to 2008. Maybe this is a bug. It could be, because it is a new product, right? Maybe I should file a bug report. No, it can’t be a bug, someone would have reported it by now. I must have done something to mess it up. I vaguely remember opening up another project to look at it and closing the toolbox because it was in the way, but it should come back shouldn’t it? Yeah, it should come back, but it didn’t. Desperately searching for some way to get the items back, I trolled the menus, scoured the icons and noticed this. Click! It’s back. Yay! Hoorah! Happy days are back again!

Thanks to Robert for the answer!