Erasing the Find/Replace History on Visual Studio 2010 - visual-studio-2010

Question

I've looked around online to try to find a way to delete the history of VS 2010's Find/Replace feature, but all I've gotten are answers only valid for previous versions (VS 05, VS 08, etc.). Does anyone know how clear it for the 2010 version?
Thanks!

Answer 1

Open regedit.exe, go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\Find. Remove all keys that starts with Find and Replace, like Find1, Find2, Replace1, etc. You can remove history for Find only or Replace only, or remove only particular Find, if you want to.
HKEY_CURRENT_USER user is for user that is currently logged in.
If you need to clear history for another user, you need to go to HKEY_USERS\{UserId}\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\Find
For example HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-21-2705333110-2095705488-3072420928-1000\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\Find.
[EDIT]
Step-by-step:
Make a quick console application:
using Microsoft.Win32;
public static void Main()
{
var findKey = Registry.CurrentUser.OpenSubKey(#"Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\Find", true);
findKey.GetValueNames()
.Where(arg => Regex.IsMatch(arg, #"^Find( \d+)?$"))
.ToList()
.ForEach(findKey.DeleteValue);
}
Compile it and close VS.
Run the compiled exe.
Open VS - Find history is empty.
Keep in mind that VS caches this Find and Replace lists. It persists the lists to the registry when you close VS. So if you clean the list and then restart VS, you will see no effect, because VS restored the list on the shutdown. So you need to close VS, clear the list, open VS.

Answer 2

My 2 cents - if all else fails, just try searching a lot of different terms yourself. There is a limit on how many searches it remembers, and eventually your own searches will push the unwanted ones off the list.

Answer 3

For Visual Studio 2017:
http://www.visualstudioextensibility.com/2017/07/15/about-the-new-privateregistry-bin-file-of-visual-studio-2017/
https://github.com/Microsoft/VSProjectSystem/blob/master/doc/overview/examine_registry.md
Extract:
Close Visual Studio
Start Regedit.exe
Select the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE node
From the main menu, select File -> Load Hive... and select the private registry file. That file is stored in the Local App Data %localappdata%\Microsoft\VisualStudio\[config]\privateregistry.bin where [config] corresponds to the configuration hive you would like to browse
It will prompt for a name - that represents the name that will be displayed under (e.g. IsolatedHive)
Now you should be able to browse the registry under the hive you created
Now search for the key "Find" and delete whatever you need to delete.
Before launching Visual Studio, you need to unload it: From the main menu File -> Unload Hive before attempting to run VS (otherwise regedit keeps the file locked, and Visual Studio will fail to launch)