In reporting projects I can't: - add non-reporting Visual Studio projects - create folders - add non-reporting file types such as .sql files Also, files are not reordered alphabetically in their folders, but according the the order in which they were added. And it is not possible to manually reorder them either. What is going on here? Why is it like this? Is there a way I can fix BIDS projects to act like normal Visual Studio projects? Even if I could just add another blank project type to the solution to hold SQL files that would be helpful.

BIDS works with Report Projects alone. For all other project types, you need to have regular VS installed. you can create a solution with multiple project types. I create a solution, with one project each for each of the report folders, and one each for each unique database.