If you are developing solutions in SSIS and are having to deal with limited screen real estate, here’s a really quick tip to de-clutter that SSIS toolbox and hide some of the Control/Data flow components that you don’t use.

With BIDS (that would be Business Intelligence Development Studio…) open and an SSIS project loaded, bring up the toolbox and right-click it. You will see the following menu:

Select the Choose Items… option. Now, click on the SSIS Control Flow Items tab and deselect all the components that you are not using.

Repeat the above step for the SSIS Data Flow Items and Maintenance Tasks tabs.

Click OK and you are all done. The components listed should now reflect just those that you will actually use and should mean less vertical scrolling.

But wait, there’s another option…

If you would prefer to have all your components immediately available, but still want to organise the toolbox, then follow these easy steps:

Right-click the toolbox and choose Add Tab. Give the Tab a nice descriptive name.

Now click on and drag into that group/tab all the components that you are not using regularly, or indeed the ones you are (if that’s what you would prefer).

All that’s left is to apply a Sort Items Alphabetically and collapse the groups you are not concerned with and you have a nice tidy toolbox.

Happy days!