File this under things I probably should have known by now.

Whenever I have needed to edit a visual studio project file's XML, I have used an external XML/text editor. All my attempts to edit with Visual Studio resulted in the entire project being loaded, not the xml contents. So, here's the trick. First right-click on the project file in the solution explorer and select 'Unload Project'. This option will only show up if your project is a part of a solution. Once the project has been unloaded, right-click again and select the 'Edit [your project file name]' command and this will bring up the XML editor with the contents of your project file. Once the changes have been made, right-click on the project again and select 'Reload Project' to bring the project back into the solution.