#78 Customize Find in files, Location and Search Type

May 28, 2010 by

With the Find in Files window showing, you can change the Look In: combo box to anything except for open docs and current docs.  This will enable the Look at these file types: option to select what files to search for.

And for more advanced searching…

There’s an ellipse “…” button next to the Look In: combo box. Pressing this will pop up the Choose Search Folders.  Here you can create a set of folders to search in. And now you can find your custom folder set as a Look in: option. Watch the video – it’s much easier to understand 🙂

http://scottcate.looplogic.com/vstricks078

Filed Under: VSTricks

#77 Use Visual Studio to Find in Files – Any disk location

May 27, 2010 by

And yet another way of searching code (or any text really) in Visual Studio… it’s called Find in Files.  It is the most comprehensive way to do a search. Even if you’re not looking for code, this can search any text string, in any set of files. We’re not talking about files linked in a project or solution, this is a disk search, say searching a directory and all child directories (or a group of directories).

Press [CTRL]+[SHIFT]+[F] to bring up Find in Files (or check the key bindings for Edit.FindInFiles).  Additionally, you can type in text in the search combo box (located on the standard toolbar, also known as the [CTRL]+[D] window) and press the Find in Files button to the right, as shown below.

http://scottcate.looplogic.com/vstricks077

Filed Under: VSTricks

#76 Dock the Find and Replace window

May 26, 2010 by

The Find and Replace window is not a dialog, but actually a tool window.  Thus you can dock it to the side if you find it in your way. Right-click on the tool window Titlebar and select Dockable.  Now the tool window can be docked using a docking target.  Additionally, you can go to Window menu and select Dockable. And finally in VS2010 – it’s drag-and-drop from the title bar or tab name, depending on the current window / dialog state.

http://scottcate.looplogic.com/vstricks076b

Filed Under: VSTricks

#75 Use wildcards and regular expressions while searching

May 25, 2010 by

Did you know that you can search in Visual Studio using wildcards and regular expressions (in addition to the regular text search) right from the Find and Replace window? This short tip/trick video shows you how.

Expand the Find options, and check Use:  This will enable you to select either wildcards or regular expressions. With out this selected, the expression builder is disabled. Now, that little grayed-out arrow, called an expression builder, next to the Find what: text box is enabled. Depending on if you chose the Wildcards or RegEx option, the expression builder is a nice little reminder of the search symbols that can be used.

http://scottcate.looplogic.com/vstricks075

Filed Under: VSTricks

Preparing for Microsoft TechEd New Orleans 2010

May 25, 2010 by

I’m grateful to have been selected as a speaker to this years Microsoft TechEd North America. I know there are 1000’s of qualified speakers and I’m honored to have had high enough scores in TechEd’s past to be invited back. That said – planning is well under way to make the best talk possible. My talk is titled “Visual Studio Tips and Tricks” and I’m co-presenting with the famous Dustin Campbell. My goal is to cover as much new material as possible. New tricks that I have not shown in past Tip/Trick talks. This is hard because there are so many VERY COOL new parts of Visual Studio 2010. Some of them deserve a lot of time, and others are 2 second “remember this keyboard shortcut” tricks.

If you’re a following of @VSTricks then you know I’m video/screen cast happy on my blog. It’s not for everyone, but to me, it’s the best learning tool. Again, I know this isn’t the best for everyone, but FOR ME, it’s the quickest, best media for me to use to get my message across. i have decided to pre-record all of my TechEd Tip/Tricks and put them online shortly before my presentation. The reason is simple. I don’t want the attendees to have to try and take notes during this “Fire Hose” style Tips/Tricks presentation. I’ll take the notes for you, right here on ScottCate.com – the whole talk will be posted in nice, easy to watch, small 5-10 minute video segments.

The only thing the attendee should think is “Wow that’s cool, I didn’t know that” and then look at the power point slide and see a blog url.

The risk: Everyone will just watch the video blog, and no one will attend my TechEd session. Yeah Right! In my wildest dreams I could get that kind of traffic.

The Upside: No note taking, and a wider audience. Not ScottGu or ScottHa wider, but a little larger none-the-less. So in the coming weeks, watch for TechEd specific Video Blog Posts.

Here are the categories that we’ll be covering Tips/Tricks in (no particular order)

  • Intellisence
  • The VS Start Page
  • 3rd Party Add-On’s (In the box)
  • Code Editor Tricks (code faster / better)
  • Multi Mon Tricks
  • Outlining
  • Navigation
  • Temp Projects
  • New Projects
  • Coding Faster (maybe this belongs up with editor tricks??)
  • Code Snippets
  • Debugging
  • Diagrams
  • Extending VS
  • Something super secret NDA can’t tell you yet (Part 1)
  • Something super secret NDA can’t tell you yet (Part 2)
Filed Under: Technology
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