Have you ever gotten code from someone or somewhere and you were not “thrilled” with how it was formatted. Was it just formatted wrong? Then the “Format Document” keyboard shortcut is for you! It will take the file you have open and format all the code until it is valid. Personally I wish their was a “Format Document for Chris Craft” keyboard shortcut because Visual Studio is a lot more forgiving than I am. But that’s okay it is still a life saver and you will love it one day when it just make the code better, all in one simple keyboard shortcut.

Format Document

Ctrl + K, Ctrl + D

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PowerPoint: 31 Days of Visual Studio 2008 Tips & Tricks.pptx (Note: PowerPoint is updated daily to include new items.)

Screen real estate is always in short demand. Give us more monitors, give us bigger monitors. What would you say if you could have more screen real estate for coding with a single keyboard shortcut? You can, it is easy. All you have to do is the following:

Toggle Full Screen Mode

Shift + Alt + Enter

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If you have a favorite Visual Studio Tip or Trick be sure to share it in the comments. I’ll compile a list and post it for everyone once there are enough.

PowerPoint: 31 Days of Visual Studio 2008 Tips & Tricks.pptx (Note: PowerPoint is updated daily to include new items.)

So is the event’s status Status.Cancelled or Status.Canceled? It is very possible one person will ask that it be changed to “Canceled” only to have another person ask to change it back to “Cancelled”. Instead of wrestling with the code or wearing our your “Find and Replace” feature, take advantage of one of Visual Studio’s features: The Rename Refactor. All you have to do is select an object and use its keyboard shortcut:

The Rename Refactor

Ctrl + R, R

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If you have a favorite Visual Studio Tip or Trick be sure to share it in the comments. I’ll compile a list and post it for everyone once there are enough.

PowerPoint: 31 Days of Visual Studio 2008 Tips & Tricks.pptx (Note: PowerPoint is updated daily to include new items.)

How often do you want to move across one of your lines of code? Every day? Every hour? More? I’m sure it is often. And I hope you know and use this shortcut since it will save you lots of effort ever time you use it. Try it today, I bet you’ll love it.

Move Cursor One Word Right

Ctrl + Right Arrow

Move Cursor One Word Left

Ctrl + Left Arrow

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If you have a favorite Visual Studio Tip or Trick be sure to share it in the comments. I’ll compile a list and post it for everyone once there are enough.

PowerPoint: 31 Days of Visual Studio 2008 Tips & Tricks.pptx (Note: PowerPoint is updated daily to include new items.)

Let’s say you have a customer class. You know this class is used throughout your solution, but you aren’t sure exactly where it is being used. How can you quickly and easily find out this information?

All you have to do is use “Find All References”, either use the right-click menu item or even better use this keyboard shortcut:

Find All References

Shift + F12

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If you have a favorite Visual Studio Tip or Trick be sure to share it in the comments. I’ll compile a list and post it for everyone once there are enough.

PowerPoint: 31 Days of Visual Studio 2008 Tips & Tricks.pptx (Note: PowerPoint is updated daily to include new items.)

If you ever find yourself debugging a program by stepping through various classes, methods, and lines of code, the toggle breakpoint keyboard shortcut will be there to assist you. As you are stepping through the code and hit various breakpoints or potential breakpoints a simple single key press is all it takes to either add or remove that line of code from your list of breakpoints.

Toggle Breakpoint

F9

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If you have a favorite Visual Studio Tip or Trick be sure to share it in the comments. I’ll compile a list and post it for everyone once there are enough.

PowerPoint: 31 Days of Visual Studio 2008 Tips & Tricks.pptx (Note: PowerPoint is updated daily to include new items.)

Today’s tip is an interesting one. Do you know how to close an application window in Windows? Usually you can press Alt + F4. Visual Studio has similar feature, that comes in handy. The close current document keyboard shortcut works on most documents irregardless of whether they are in code view or design view. Quite useful and allows yours hands to spend more time on the keyboard and less time moving the mouse around everywhere.

Close Current Document

Ctrl + F4

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If you have a favorite Visual Studio Tip or Trick be sure to share it in the comments. I’ll compile a list and post it for everyone once there are enough.

PowerPoint: 31 Days of Visual Studio 2008 Tips & Tricks.pptx (Note: PowerPoint is updated daily to include new items.)

Solutions have more and more projects these days, and projects have more and more files. If you are working on a large enterprise level line of business application then you really might want to consider today’s Visual Studio keyboard shortcut. Admit it, you’ve probably added hundreds of file using the mouse and massaging various Visual Studio menus and toolbars. But after today you will probably have a new, better way of doing the same thing. How cool is that?

Add New Item to Project

Ctrl + Shift + A

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Feedback:

If you have a favorite Visual Studio Tip or Trick be sure to share it in the comments. I’ll compile a list and post it for everyone once there are enough.

PowerPoint: 31 Days of Visual Studio 2008 Tips & Tricks.pptx (Note: PowerPoint is updated daily to include new items.)