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Shortcuts: Visual Studio 2005

Welcome to the next in the series of posts on program shortcuts. This time round we're talking Visual Studio. I'll be assuming that you don't have the ViEmu plugin enabled and that you're just using the IDE in the way it was intended without any other form of shortcut-based plugin installed.

I'm using Visual Studio 2005 and I think I have the C# settings enabled by default. Most of these shortcuts will work regardless of the default setting that you have, but some of them will no doubt be different. Please note that I won't be going through every single shortcut that Visual Studio supports, instead I'll be going through the ones that I find very handy. If you're looking to find a complete list, then you should check out MSDN.

Basic text manipulation shortcuts are the same as what is posted in the Windows shortcuts entry that I posted. OK, on with the goodies.

• CTRL + Space or CTRL + K, L - Display the Intellisense members drop-down based on the current cursor position, or auto-complete the current symbol.
• CTRL + SHIFT + Space or CTRL + K, P - Display the Intellisense parameter list tool-tip based on the corrent curosr position (handy for when you've forgotten a function's singature).
• CTRL + F3 - Find the next instance of the word under the cursor.
• F3 - Find the next instance of the search word.
• SHIFT + F3 - Find the previous instance of the search word.
• F5 - Run in the debugger.
• SHIFT + F5 - Run without the debugger.
• F6 - Build solution.
• SHIFT + F6 - Build current project.
• F7 - Show code for the current item.
• CTRL + F7 - Compile current file.
• F9 - Toggle breakpoint.
• F10 - Step over current line (while debugging).
• F11 - Step into the current function call (while debugging).
• F12 - Go to definition.
• CTRL + SHIFT + B - Rebuild.
• CTRL + SHIFT + F9 - Remove all breakpoints.
• CTRL + D, B - Show the breakpoints window.
• CTRL + D, E - Show the exceptions window.
• CTRL + D, N - Set breakpoint in a function call.
• CTRL + D, I - Show the Immediate window.
• CTRL + ALT + P - Attach the debugger to a currently running process.
• CTRL + SHIFT + A - Add a new item to the project.
• SHIFT + ALT + A - Add an existing item to the project.
• SHIFT + ALT + C - Add a new class to the project.
• CTRL + - - Navigate to previous location. If you've gone to the definition of a function, or moved to the end of a file, this shortcut will take you back to where you were. Quite handy for when you need to do things like add #includes to the top of the file and then return to where you were before.
• CTRL + SHIFT + - - Same as the previous shortcut, but navigating forward again.
• CTRL + F - Open the Quick Find dialog.
• CTRL + SHIFT + F - Open the Find in Files dialog.
• CTRL + H - Open the Replace dialog.
• CTRL + SHIFT + H - Open the Replace in Files dialog.
• ALT + F12 - Open the Find Symbol dialog.
• CTRL + SHIFT + V - Cycle through the clipboard ring.
• CTRL + K, F - Auto-format current selection.
• CTRL + K, D - Auto-format current document.
• CTRL + K, S - Surround selection with a template/code snippet.
• SHIFT + ALT + Enter - Toggle Fullscreen.
• CTRL + K, K or CTRL + B, T - Toggle bookmark at the current location.
• CTRL + K, N or CTRL + B, N - Move to the next bookmark.
• CTRL + B, P - Move to the previous bookmark.
• CTRL + B, C - Clear all bookmarks.
• CTRL + K, C - Comment out selected text.
• CTRL + K, U - Uncomment selected text.
• CTRL + M, M - Toggle view of current fold.
• CTRL + M, L - Toggle view of all folds.
• CTRL + M, O - Collapse to definitions.
• CTRL + M, H - Hide selected text (shows up as '...').
• CTRL + M, U - Unhide selected text.

It's far from an exhaustive list, but I think there may well be some in there that you haven't seen before. There are a stack more, so check out the documentation if this little list doesn't sort you out.