Many people have asked how to compile and upload using Visual Studio. They were expecting special "arduino" tool bar buttons to perform these tasks. The fact is that Visual Studio has many ways to compile and run applications so Visual Micro just taps into the standard Visual Studio commands.
These commands are shown by default in Visual Studio as various tool bar buttons and menu items. This guide explains more...
The standard Visual Studio "Build" options will build/compile for Arduino for either a single Arduino project or all Arduino projects in the current current solution.
The standard Visual Studio "Debug" options will upload (but not debug). "Start with or without" debugging will upload for the selected port and board. On the tools menu you can also override the serial upload and use a programmer instead.
To recap, all of the Visual Studio "build/debug" tool bar buttons, "build" menu items, "debug" menu items, right click context project menu and keyboard shortcuts provide compile and upload for Arduino. For an example then press F5
If you have multiple arduino projects in a single solution you can right mouse menu on a project name to "Set As Startup Project". This governs which project is uploaded when clicking F5 or any of the standard "Start" commands in Visual Studio. The current start up project will be shown in bold in the Visual Studio solution explorer.
All of the above Visual Studio commands will automatically work with Arduino when an Arduino sketch is open. These commands work in the same way for all types of Visuaol Studio applications. The commands are described in more detail in the Microsoft Visual Studio help.
Code Error Tracking
Many code errors will be shown as you type or when you view your source code however some will become more obvious when you try to compile. When you compile you will see a status in the "Sketch Builder" output pane. Errors will also appear in the output pane.
You can drill down to the relevent source code of any errors by double clicking the respective line in the "Sketch Builder" output.