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step 1: create a project from existing sources step 2: add a bunch of top-level source directories (which contain more stuff than you need) step 3: after the project is created, click on one of the lower level folders and select "delete" This will actually delete the folder... not remove it from the project. There appears to be no way to remove it from the project without editing the xml.
Delete will, as you say, delete the physical files in the tree. It is by design and not a bug. The project view is almost identical to the Files view except for some files and folders are filtered out. You can control which folders you *don't* want to see in the Project view by editing the Ignore Folders Pattern in the project's properties or the similar Ignore Files Pattern filter in Tools/Options/Miscellaneous/Files.
Please reconsider your response: I want to remove a random folder, and you have suggested using a regular expression to filter out folder names. There's no documentation in the help for this (yet), so I presume if I two folders name a/foo and b/foo I cannot "filter" a/foo from the project without b/foo, or any other folder named foo. Under Java, I can remove a project, and it is nice enough to ask me whether I want to keep the sources or remove them. Why is it reasonable in Java, but not C++?