Hidden Features of Visual Studio (2005-2010)?

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Visual Studio is such a massively big product that even after years of working with it I sometimes stumble upon a new/better way to do things or things I didn't even know were possible.

For instance-

• Crtl + R, Ctrl + W to show white spaces. Essential for editing Python build scripts.

• Under "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\8.0\Text Editor" Create a String called Guides with the value "RGB(255,0,0), 80" to have a red line at column 80 in the text editor.

What other hidden features have you stumbled upon?

Answer 1

Make a selection with ALT pressed - selects a square of text instead of whole lines.

Answer 2

Tracepoints!

Put a breakpoint on a line of code. Bring up the Breakpoints Window and right click on the new breakpoint. Select 'When Hit...'. By ticking the 'Print a message' check box Visual Studio will print out a message to the Debug Output every time the line of code is executed, rather than (or as well as) breaking on it. You can also get it to execute a macro as it passes the line.

Answer 3

You can drag code to the ToolBox. Try it!

Answer 4

Click an identifier (class name, variable, etc) then hit F12 for "Go To Definition". I'm always amazed how many people I watch code use the slower right-click -> "Go To Definition" method.

EDIT: Then you can use Ctrl+- to jump back to where you were.

Answer 5

CTRL+SHIFT+V will cycle through your clipboard, Visual Studio keeps a history of copies.

Answer 6

Sara Ford covers lots of lovely tips: http://blogs.msdn.com/saraford/archive/tags/Visual+Studio+2008+Tip+of+the+Day/default.aspx

But some of my favourites are Code Snippets, Ctrl + . to add a using <Namespace> or generate a method stub. I can't live without that.

Check out a great list in the Visual Studio 2008 C# Keybinding poster: http://www.microsoft.com/downloadS/details.aspx?familyid=E5F902A8-5BB5-4CC6-907E-472809749973&displaylang=en

Answer 7

CTRL-K, CTRL-D

Reformat Document!
This is under the VB keybindings, not sure about C#

Answer 8

How many times do you debug an array in a quickwatch or a watch window and only have visual studio show you the first element? Add ",N" to the end of the definition to make studio show you the next N items as well. IE "this->m_myArray" becomes "this->m_array,5".

Answer 9

Incremental search: While having a source document open hit (CTRL + I) and type the word you are searching for you can hit (CTRL + I) again to see words matching your input.

Answer 10

You can use the following codes in the watch window.

@err - display last error
@err,hr - display last error as an HRESULT
@exception - display current exception

Answer 11

• Ctrl-K, Ctrl-C to comment a block of text with // at the start
• Ctrl-K, Ctrl-U to uncomment a block of text with // at the start

Can't live without it! :)

Answer 12

Stopping the debugger from stepping into trivial functions.

When you’re stepping through code in the debugger, you can spend a lot of time stepping in and out of functions you’re not particularly interested in, with names such as GetID(), or std::vector<>(), to pick a C++ example. You can use the registry to make the debugger ignore these.

For Visual Studio 2005, you have to go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio \8.0\NativeDE\StepOver and add string values containing regular expressions for each function or set of functions you wish to exclude; e.g.

std::vector.*::.*
TextBox::GetID

You can also override these for individual exceptions. For instance, suppose you did want to step into the vector class’s destructor:

std::vector.*::\~.*=StepInto

You can find details for other versions of Visual Studio at http://blogs.msdn.com/andypennell/archive/2004/02/06/69004.aspx

Answer 13

Ctrl-F10: run to cursor during debugging. Took me ages to find this, and I use it all the time;

Ctrl-E, Ctrl-D: apply standard formatting (which you can define).

Answer 14

TAB key feature.

1. If you know snippet key name, write and click double Tab. for example: Write

   foreach

and then click tab key twice to

foreach (object var in collection_to_loop)
{

}

2. If you write any event, write here

        Button btn = new Button();
        btn.Click +=         

and then click tab key twice to

private void Form1_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
        Button btn = new Button();
        btn.Click += new EventHandler(btn_Click);     
}    
void btn_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
        throw new Exception("The method or operation is not implemented.");
}

btn_Click function write automatically

3. in XAML Editor, Write any event. for example:

MouseLeftButtonDown then click tab
MouseLeftButtonDown="" then click tab again MouseLeftButtonDown="Button_MouseLeftButtonDown" in the code section Button_MouseLeftButtonDown method created.

Answer 15

Sara Ford has this market cornered.

http://blogs.msdn.com/saraford/default.aspx

More Visual Studio tips and tricks than you can shake a stick at.

Some others:

• The Visual Studio 2005 and 2008 3-month trial editions are fully-functional, and can be used indefinitely (forever) by setting the system clock back prior to opening VS. Then, when VS is opened, set the system clock forward again so your datetimes aren't screwed up.
• But that's really piracy and I can't recommend it, especially when anybody with a .edu address can get a fully-functional Pro version of VS2008 through Microsoft Dreamspark.
• You can use Visual Studio to open 3rd-party executables, and browse embedded resources (dialogs, string tables, images, etc) stored within.
• Debugging visualizers are not exactly a "hidden" feature but they are somewhat neglected, and super-useful, since in addition to using the provided visualizers you can roll your own for specific data sets.
• Debugger's "Set Instruction Pointer" or "Set Next Statement" command.
• Conditional breakpoints (as KiwiBastard noted).
• You can use Quickwatch etc. to evaluate not only the value of a variable, but runtime expressions around that variable.

Answer 16

T4 (Text Template Transformation Toolkit). T4 is a code generator built right into Visual Studio

Answer 17

Custom IntelliSense dropdown height, for example displaying 50 items instead of the default which is IMO ridiculously small (8).

(To do that, just resize the dropdown next time you see it, and Visual Studio will remember the size you selected next time it opens a dropdown.)

Answer 18

Discovered today:

Ctrl + .

Brings up the context menu for refactoring (then one that's accessible via the underlined last letter of a class/method/property you've just renamed - mouse over for menu or "Ctrl" + ".")

Answer 19

A lot of people don't know or use the debugger to it's fullest - I.E. just use it to stop code, but right click on the red circle and there are a lot more options such as break on condition, run code on break.

Also you can change variable values at runtime using the debugger which is a great feature - saves rerunning code to fix a silly logic error etc.

Answer 20

Line transpose, Shift-Alt-T
Swaps two line (current and next) and moves cursor to the next line. I'm lovin it. I've even written a macro which changed again position by one line, executed line transpose and changed line position again so it all looking like I swapping current line with previous (Reverse line transpose).

Word transpose, Shift-Ctrl-T

Answer 21

When developing C++, Ctrl-F7 compiles the current file only.

Answer 22

Document Outline in the FormsDesigner (CTRL + ALT + T)

Fast control renaming, ordering and more!

Answer 23

To auto-sync current file with Solution Explorer. So don't have to look where the file lives in the project structure

Tools -> Options -> Projects and Solutions -> "Track Active Item in Solution Explorer"

Edit: If this gets too annoying for you then you can use Dan Vanderboom's macro to invoke this feature on demand through a keystroke.

(Note: Taken from the comment below by Jerry).

Answer 24

I'm not sure if it's "hidden", but not many people know about it -- pseudoregisters. Comes very handy when debugging, I've @ERR, hr in my watch window all the time.

Answer 25

Ctrl-Minus, Ctrl-Plus, navigates back and forward where you've been recently (only open files, though).

Answer 26

I don't use it often, but I do love:

ctrl-alt + mouse select

To select in a rectangular block, to 'block' boundaries.

As noted in comments,

alt + mouse select

Does just a plain rectangular block.

Answer 27

Here's something I learned (for C#):

You can move the cursor to the opening curly brace from the closing curly brace by pressing Control + ].

I learned this on an SO topic that's a dupe of this one:

“Hidden Secrets” of the Visual Studio .NET debugger?

Answer 28

CTRL + Shift + U -> Uppercase highlighted section. CTRL + U -> Lowercase the highlighted section Great for getting my SQL Statements looking just right when putting them into string queries.

Also useful for code you've found online where EVERYTHING IS IN CAPS.

Answer 29

Middle Mouse Button Click on the editor tab closes the tab.

Answer 30

To display any chunk of data as an n-byte "array", use the following syntax in Visual Studio's QuickWatch window:

variable, n

For example, to view a variable named foo as a 256-byte array, enter the following expression in the QuickWatch window:

foo, 256

This is particularly useful when viewing strings that aren't null-terminated or data that's only accessible via a pointer. You can use Visual Studio's Memory window to achieve a similar result, but using the QuickWatch window is often more convenient for a quick check.