Visual Studio's most useful and underused tips

Do you know Solution Tree Explorer are Searchable !!! Below ones are a saver .

There's a lot of little tricks like this in Visual Studio that even the most seasoned developers sometimes miss. This phenomenon isn't limited to Visual Studio, of course. It's all software !

Here's some exceedingly useful stuff in Visual Studio (It's free to download and use, BTW) that folks often miss.

SEARCH SOLUTION EXPLORER WITH CTRL+;

You can just click the text box above the Solution Explorer to search all the nodes - visible or hidden. Or, press "Ctrl + ;"

Type in anything and this shows results which match

Even stuff that's DEEP in the beast. The resulting view is filtered and will remain that way until you clear the search.

QUICK LAUNCH - CTRL+Q 

If there is one feature that no one uses and everyone should use, it's Quick Launch. Some blogs tell us the internal telemetry numbers show that usage of Quick Launch in the single digits or lower. 

Do you know that you (we) are constantly digging around in the menus for stuff? Most of us use the mouse and go Tools...Options...and stare. 

Just press Ctrl+Q and type. Need to change the Font Size?

Want to Compare Files? Did you know VS had that? yes, you can do it faster !!! (Just Type In Compare in Quick launch)

Just Force yourself to use Ctrl+Q for a few days and see if you can make it a habit. You'll thank yourself.

MAP MODE FOR THE SCROLL BAR

This feature totally surprised me. Like "I had NO IDEA that was there" type features. Try "map mode" in the Quick Launch and turn it on...then check out your scroll bar in a large file.

Just Enable Map Mode for Vertical Scrollbar as shown

This Feature is awesome and I bet you would love it if it's very large file.

Your scrollbar will turn into a thumbnail that you can hover over
and use to navigate your file!

TAB MANAGEMENT

Most of us manage tabs like this.

1. Open Tab
2. Repeat
3. Declare Tab Bankruptcy
4. Close All Tabs
5. Goto 0

But you DO have both "pinned tabs" and "preview tabs" available.

If you pin useful tabs, just like in your browser those tabs will stay to the left and stay open. You can not just "close all" and "close all but this" on a right click, but you can also "close all but pinned."

Additionally, you don't always have to double-click in the Solution Explorer to see what's in a file. That just creates a new tab that you're likely going to close anyway. Try just single clicking, or better yet, use your keyboard. You'll get a preview tab on the far right side. You'll never have more than one and preview tabs won't litter your tab list...unless you promote them.

NAVIGATE TO - CTRL+, (CONTROL+COMMA)

Absolutely high on the list of useful things is Ctrl+, for NavigateTo. Why click around with your mouse to open a file or find a specific member or function? Press Ctrl+, and start typing. It searches files, members, type...everything. And you can navigate around with your keyboard before you hit enter.

There's basically no reason to poke around in the Solution Explorer if you already know the name of the item you want to see. Ctrl+, is very fast.

MOVE LINES WITH YOUR KEYBOARD

I realize that Visual Studio isn't Emacs or VIM but it does have a few tiny tricks that most VS users don't use.

You can move lines just by pressing Alt-up/down arrows. I've never seen anyone do this in the wild . You can also Shift-Select a bunch of lines and then Alt-Arrow them around as a group.

You can also do Square Selection with Alt and Drag...and drag yourself a nice rectangle...then start typing to type on a dozen lines at once.

Perhaps you knew these, maybe you learned a few things. I think the larger point is to have the five to ten most useful features right there in your mind ready to go. 

These are some. What are your tips? 

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