Visual Studio: Refresh "Find All References" results - visual-studio

The Find All References tool is very useful, but I often find myself wishing I could refresh the results, such as:
After changing one of the listed lines such that it no longer references what I did "Find all References" on.
After adding or removing some lines of code, which messes up the "double-click to go to line" feature of the "Find All References" window.
As far as I can tell, there's no way to refresh the results, but I find this hard to believe. Am I overlooking something or is this really a missing feature?
I'm aware I can go to some place where the method/variable/etc. is used, right-click it, and do "Find All References" again, but that's much more tedious than just hitting a Refresh button.

After more investigation, this isn't currently possible. However, there's a request for it in the VS community forum. If you think a Refresh for "Find" or "Find All References" would be useful, please vote for the following requests:
Add a "refresh" button to "find references" (Shift-F12) window
Add a 'Refresh' Button to Find Results tabs

Related

Where is the "Add Dynamic Content" window in my MS-Flow?

Until recently, when building flows, I had the option of clicking on "Add Dynamic Content" to bring up the Dynamic Content/Expressions pop-up.
Now, these options are gone. No link to the pop-up, no pop-up. Just a list of available fields/variables when I click in the step.
Did something change in MS-Flow? I've looked around for settings/preferences but not found any. Am I missing something?
Is it a privileges issue (as in, I should go annoy IT until they restore something)?
Try zooming out the page to 75% or less and exit/enter the field again - the dynamic content should appear. 
Ridiculous bug.
P.S. Also, if you are using Firefox, there may be additional difficulties with entering the expression - switch to Edge or Chrome. 

How to actually search all files in Visual Studio

I am using Visual Studio. Say for instance I have a static public method named FooBar() in class Utils. Let's also say that I use this method in a lot of .aspx files. Let's say I change the method signature of FooBar() to FooBar(string), and subsequently I'd like to find all the instances of Utils.FooBar so I can update them.
Now let's say I go to the Solution Explorer search box, select "Search within file contents", and type "Utils". Despite the fact that I make Utils.* method calls everywhere, the only thing that shows up is the Utils.cs file. If I keep typing "Utils.FooBar", nothing shows up.
Right now, I am launching a cygwin window and using grep since normal windows search is pretty useless too. But it seems like there there must be an actual way of searching within all files in Visual Studio. Am I missing something?
I think you are talking about ctrl + shift + F, by default it should be on "look in: entire solution" and there you go.
So the answer seems to be to NOT use the Solution Explorer search box.
Rather, open any file in the solution, then use the control-f search pop-up to search all files by:
selecting "Find All" from the "--> Find Next / <-- Find Previous" selector
selecting "Current Project" or "Entire Solution" from the selector that normally says just "Current Document".
Press Ctrl+,
Then you will see a docked window under name of "Go to all"
This a picture of the "Go to all" in my IDE
One can access the "Find in Files" window via the drop-down menu selection and search all files in the Entire Solution:
Edit > Find and Replace > Find in Files
Other, alternative is to open the "Find in Files" window via the "Standard Toolbars" button as highlighted in the below screen-short:
Preface: As others have said, ctrl+shift+F is the tool, but I am so often frustrated by the fact that the default options don't find everything!
Answer: If you want to search every file then, from the "Find in Files" tab:
Click the ellipses to the right of "Look in" then choose the folder containing your Solution.
Set "File types" to *
Click "Find All" and finally find what you were looking for.
Warning: The search could take a while and it may find occurrences in files that shouldn't be edited.

Keep previous "find all references" results

I wonder, whether there is any way NOT to clear previous find all references results when making a next search?
If I do "find all references" once, the results will appear in "find symbol results window". I am working with a large solution, and if I do "Resolve results" it may take up to several minutes for the results to be resolved. And when I do the next "find all references", previous results will just disappear. Is there any way to keep them - just collapse - and add a new results below and so on... Anyway there is a "clear all" capability to clear the window...
In the new Visual Studio "15" Preview 5 release, our revised Find All References window supports this. Press the padlock icon/button (tooltip “Lock Results”) in the Find All References window’s toolbar, and Visual Studio will locks the results in that window, so that the next Find All References call you make will create a new Tool Window for the results. You can place the new tool window side by side with the previous result set if you wish. We’re improving labelling of this button in later releases.

Visual Studio: quick access to most used files

The solution I work on is quite big so it can require a lot of clicks to get to the desired file. I spend 90% of the time working with 8-10 files from this solution so it would be really convenient to have some kind of "Favorites" in my solution so I could jump to the most used files quickly. "Recent files" doesn't cut it, so maybe you know some extensions for VS2010 that do that? Google didn't provide any good options so I decided to give it a shot here and ask what do you use.
Thanks in advance
It's not quite what you asked for, but it'll help endlessly:
In vanilla VS2010, hit Ctrl-Comma (by default) for the "Navigate To" window. You can type a partial file, class or method name and it'll show you a list of where that appears in your solution, and you can open directly from there.
The DevExpress plugins also have a "Recently Used File" window (Ctrl-Shift-Period by default, I think) that does similar, but only shows files you've recently used (not classes or methods). I have to say, though, I've not used that since I've had VS2010.
Wow! A question since 2011 that is still valid to date.
From View Menu click Bookmark Window
open your favorite file
click any line - preferably the beginning of the file
from the Bookmarks Window, click the icon "Toggle a bookmark on the current line."
Very convenient!
Haven't tried this particular feature of the PowerTools myself, but it could do the trick:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudio/archive/2010/08/03/quick-access-extension.aspx

Visual Studio 2008 -- Can I change which "add reference" tab is selected by default?

Every time you start Visual Studio, the first time you click "Add Reference" to add a DLL reference to a project, by default, the .NET tab on that dialog box is selected. As most people reading this have probably noticed, it can take a long time -- often more than 30 seconds -- for the full list of .NET components to fill in.
Because of the way we're designing our solutions, though, about 80% of the time, I want to select either from the "Projects" tab or from the "Browse" tab.
Is there a setting anywhere in Visual Studio that will let me make "Projects" be the first tab that loads up? Does anyone know any other, hidden tricks to accomplish the same effect?
I use this tip to do this in a different way. Open your Object Browser (Cntrl + Alt + J). Change Browse dropdown to "My Solution". Select the project you want. On Toolbar, click "Add to References in Selected Project in Solution Explorer".
A neat work around which has saved me many hours.
If you have the PowerCommands for Visual Studio 2008 installed, there is functionality to copy-paste references between projects, as well as copy-paste individual projects as references, all without opening the references dialog.
I have never found anywhere that allows you to change the default tab. And yeah, it's annoying how long that window can take to load. I think this is something that we just have to live with.
Tuna Toksoz has created a Fast Add Reference dialog plugin for Visual Studio.
http://devlicio.us/blogs/tuna_toksoz/archive/2009/06/18/vs-addin-fast-add-reference-dialog-no-more-coffee-break.aspx
Another tip you might consider is that if you reference a type in another project, ReSharper will notice it and offer to add it to your references for you.
With this, I never visit that tab unless I have file dll references to add.
I am afraid the answer, as far as I can tell, is no. I even took a trip through the registry to determine if there was someway to reorder the tabs. You might be able to do it with a hex editor but I would advise against that.

Resources