How to import an existing folder into Visual Studio

Hi,

I am new to Visual Studio.
We have some C++ source code along with some Lex/yacc files.
Till now, we used to build on Linux.

The source code is arranged in several folders and there is a makefile
for each folder.
The toplevel makefile calls make on each folder and then builds the
final executable.

I need to transfer this C++ source code onto Visual Studio to build it
for windows and
to use the Visual Studio's debugger.
(I tried building on CL compiler using the makefile but could not make
a debug build after trying
all the debug options like /Zi /Z7 etc.)

Can somebody tell me how I can import this whole directory structure
into the Visual Studio ?
I do not want to manually create the several folders and then add
files to it.

Ideally, It would be so good if Visual Studio could take
in the Makefile and then create the directory structure itself.
Can this be done ?