I'm having a weird issue with Visual Studio 2008. Every time I fire it up, the solution explorer is about an inch wide. It's like it can't remember it's layout settings.
Every un-docked window is in the position I place it. But if I dock a window, it's position is saved, but it's size will be reset to very-narrow (around an inch) when I load.
I've never come across this before and it's pretty annoying. Any ideas?
The things I've tried:
Saving, then reloading settings via Import/Export.
Resetting all environment settings via Import/Export.
Window -> Reset Window layout.
Comination of rebooting after changing the above.
Installed SP1. No improvement
none of which changed the behaviour of docked windows. (Also, definitely no other instances running..)
I do run two monitors, but I've had this setup on three different workstations and this is the first time I've come across it.
I had the same problem. It turned out that if the VS window was non-maximized, it was really
small. So after making the non-maximized wider, the problem disappeared.
I occasionally get this bug, and others related to layout/fonts/colouring etc. A little trick I've found is use the Tools -> Import and Export Settings, export your current settings once you've got everything setup as you like, then close and reopen Visual Studio and import. Hopefully that'll sort you out.
In 2005 there were some little bugs with viewing Project/Solution property panels when the Solution Explorer wasn't in its default position, docked on the left of the screen - I don't know if that's changed in VS2008, but you might want to put it back there and see.
Now, when are we going to get decent MultiMonitor support?!
Maybe you're closing Visual Studio while some other instance is still alive. The settings of the last instance that is closed is the one that will be applied.
Related
I've already done some searching on this, but to no avail, and it's driving me insane.
I use the dark theme in VS 2013, and I have a selection of add-ons installed that change how the text is displayed in some circumstances. The two that immediately spring to mind are ReSharper (v9) and VS Commands.
The issue I have is that whenever I go into the VS options, or even ReSharper options, I'm greeted with some dark text, and some light text, which actually makes using the options extraordinarily difficult, as shown here:
If anybody knows what's causing this, or how to fix it, I'll be eternally grateful. I've tried resetting the font colour settings, but nothing seems to be touching it. I don't particularly want to reset all of my VS settings, so I'm holding off on that in the hope that somebody can point me in the right direction.
Update (21 Aug 15):
I've noticed today that my ReSharper options appear to be correct when I open Visual Studio initially - not opening via a solution file. As soon as I open a solution, the colours change to how they are in the screenshot. It doesn't appear to matter what solution I open, but as soon as a solution is opened the problem presents itself again.
I have a multi-monitor system, and Visual Studio set up like this:
The main windows on the left, stuff like Solution Explorer, Output and Error windows on the right. When I want to open any file from the second monitor, the new tab also gets opened there. However, I rather want new tabs to appear in the tab well on my main monitor. Is there any setting (or extension) that can achieve that?
It is difficult to tell what causing it. Resharper and Productivity Power Tools both have an influence on how your document windows are managed.
A few options:
Try dragging the new window that is opening on the wrong screen and dock it; VS might remember this.
Check/review all the options for Resharper and the Productivity Power Tools.
Check that you don't have any additional R# extensions installed.
Export your current settings and reset your environment.
Disable extensions one at a time. A common approach to solving a problem by stripping things back until it works again.
I remember having some problems years ago when I ran a multi-monitor setup (at one stage 3+ screens), however now I do all development on a Surface Pro 3.
Ok, if you're like me, you've accidentally dragged one of the many, many panes in Visual Studio around and spent some tedious time getting things back in order again.
Is there any way to lock down all the panes in Visual Studio so they cannot be dragged and placed elsewhere ?
When you have your pane layouts (as well as your fonts, toolbars, colour schemes and whatnot) the way you like them, export your settings (Tools, Import and Export Settings) and give the file a sensible name. Then if you have a spot of accidental dragging, just import your saved ones. This is better than Reset Layout if your preferred layout is not the default.
As far as I know, no. But everything for getting for working with tabs and tab groups is inside the "Window" menu item in VS. But if you want to reset everything back to the way it was why not try:
Window -> Reset Windows Layout
You might also want to check out this Arranging and Using Windows in Visual Studio, I think you might be able to create a workspace, save it and if needed reset back to it after you moved windows around.
Export your settings according to Mar's answer and then check out this extension:
http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/a79072f7-3109-44a0-95c0-9c50e729d6a3
A real lifesaver :)
Feature request on User Voice:
Lock/Unlock Docked Window Layout
You can reset Visual Studio windows back to the default by going to Window->Reset Window Layout (Visual Studio 10). Other versions have something similar. This helps the tedium on dragging the windows back in order.
In VS 2010, after I would close my solution, and then re-open it the next day, all the documents that I had open, would still be open. Just what I wanted.
After installing SP1, every time I open my solution, all my documents are closed, no matter what state I left them in.
Is this expected behavior, a bug, or is there a setting I don't know about? How can I get my documents back?
EDIT 29-Mar
Re-installing VS2010 and SP1 did not resolve this issue.
Building on top of SteveBob's answer, just do a Window -> Reset Window Layout
This should fix the tab problem. There is of course the side-effect that you'll have to redo/re-add all the windows ( output, solution explorer, properties, find, watches, immediate, etc)
Backup your settings then do a devenv.exe /resetsettings.
It appears that there is not an adjustable setting that controls whether or not the open documents are remembered. By default, Visual Studio stores this data and then re-opens the documents that were open the last time the project/solution was closed. As pointed out by some links referenced by Stuart Dunkeld, it takes a Macro in Visual Studio to override this default behavior.
My problem appears to be that my 'Settings' had become bloated/corrupt. Based on the suggestion of Luke, I exported my settings, then did a reset. This restored the default 'Remember Open Documents' behavior. Then after much fooling around, I was able to import (almost) all of my old settings and still not mess up the proper document behavior.
When importing my settings, I selected everything except the 'Window Layouts' settings.
This restored my existing settings, while keeping the default Visual Studio behavior of remembering which documents were open.
I then re-exported my (fixed) settings so that I had a backup. That's when I noticed that my old, possibly corrupt exported settings file was 8.6MB, while my new, correct exported settings file was only 0.2MB.
After examining some of the differences between these two settings files, some of the information leads me to believe that the installation of VS2010 SP1 had a conflict with the 'Document Well 2010 Plus' feature in the Productivity Power Tools extension, but I cannot positively verify this.
Does it work OK with a new solution? If so, you could try trashing the .suo file attached to your solution.
I keep a lot of files open. Every so often, my VS2012 stops restoring the open files. Opening them again does not help the restore process.
I tried:
All the above suggestions, and all the suggestions I could find elsewhere
In particular: deleting .suo, .filters, .sdf, .opensdf, etc
Plus /resetlayout
Plus /resetsettings(ouch)
And none work for me. Or, at least not reliably.
But I just tried:
Install Productivity Power Tools
Enable Options / Productivity Power Tools / All Extensions / Custom Document Well
Restart Visual Studio
(the PPTools document well saves and restores properly!)
Disable Options / Productivity Power Tools / All Extensions / Custom Document Well
Restart Visual Studio
And now the builtin document well has resumed saving and restoring properly as well! At least for the moment.
I'm guessing that the builtin "document well" was derived from the one in PPTools, possibly causing the side effect of turning the PPTools on and off.
(I could simply use the PPTools document well all the time. But I can't get the colors therein to work to my satisfaction.)
Hope this helps someone.
Have you tried deleting the .suo file? It may have become corrupted.
My computer crashed while I had VS2010 open, and when I recovered (all I did was reset the computer) and opened visual studio again, all my layout was messed up. Since I had very little customization done, I figured I would just reset the window layout. I tried Window > Reset Window Layout, but that didn't work. I even tried resetting the environment. How can I get back the default layout that I had right after installing?
Specifically, the changes I notice right away are the Solution explorer/etc. group of windows being on the right instead of the left, and the error reporting/output/code definition windows missing from the bottom. I know that I can just fix these things myself, but I don't know what else I am not noticing that has changed, and therefore would like to see everything reset automatically.
I found this which worked: Visual studio forgets window settings and makes a mess