Quickly find files in your Visual Studio solution
When developing large scale projects, one of the most annoying problems of the day by day development is searching the correct file to edit. Because of the large number of folders, projects and files it might take some time to find the right file. Scrolling from top to bottom and back to the top without finding what you’re looking for is no shame. Most of the time you even know the complete filename you’re searching for. There is a hidden feature in Visual Studio which solves this problem and helps you to quickly find files in your Visual Studio solution.
This feature is hidden in the default “Find” control in the toolbar by typing the command “>of (space) (BeginOfFileName)”. After you type a letter of the filename, an auto complete list will show up with directories/files that match these characters. After selecting one result and pressing ENTER, the correct file will show up in your Visual Studio.
I’ve tested this hidden feature and it works fine in the releases of Visual Studio 2005, 2008 and 2010.
Quickly find instances in Visual Studio 2010
In the same context I can highlight one of the new features in the Visual Studio 2010 IDE, Using the new “”Navigate To” window (shortcut: CONTROL + COMMA) Visual Studio 2010 allows you to quickly find all types, files, variables and members within your solution matching the search text. Here you don’t need to know the beginning of the filename. All solution objects that contains the search terms will be showed in the results. You can also use multiple search items or Pascal Casing (ex. the search term DGV will show DataGridView as a result). When clicking on a result, you can easily navigate to the correct file.
