I've been trying to improve my use of keyboard shortcuts in Visual Studio .NET. Here are the ones I use most often, what I consider my "core" keyboard shortcuts:
Go to declaration
F12
Debug: step over
F10
Debug: run to cursor
ctrl + F10
Debug: step into
F11
Debug: step out
shift + F11
Toggle a breakpoint
F9
Go to next item in task list or search results
F8
Go to previous item in task list or search results
shift + F8
Switch to code view
F7
Switch to designer view
shift + F7
Run with debugging
F5
Stop debugging
shift + F5
Run without debugging
ctrl + F5
Move to previous edit point (back)
ctrl + -
Switch to the Task List
ctrl + alt + K
Switch to the Immediate window
ctrl + alt + I
Switch to the Output window
ctrl + alt + O
Find
ctrl + F
Find in all files
ctrl + shift + F
Replace
ctrl + H
Incremental find (it's pure sex!)
ctrl + I
I'm still struggling to find a keyboard shortcut that sets the input focus back to the code window after doing a ctrl+alt+O or ctrl+alt+K. As it turns out, that key is
Esc
But enough about me. Which keyboard shortcuts do you use most often?
The best early reference for keyboard shortcuts in VS.NET 2003 was Mastering Visual Studio .NET; Appendix C contains an excellent reference table of all the keyboard shortcuts in .NET.
As good as that reference table is, you can generate a better keyboard reference yourself using my improved keyboard shortcut enumerator macro.*
It groups the results by scope and sorts by primary keyboard key so related key accelerators are all displayed together (eg, F5, ctrl+F5, shift+F5, etc).
The macro works in VS.NET 2003 and VS 2005, and unless you are a total Visual Studio Ninjatm I guarantee you'll find at least a few keyboard shortcuts in there that you didn't know about. I also did a diff on the resulting files to see what keyboard shortcuts have changed in Visual Studio 2005:
- VS.NET 2003 Keyboard Shortcuts
- VS.NET 2005 Keyboard Shortcuts
- Keyboard shortcuts that are new to VS.NET 2005
* Originally based on an earlier macro I discovered.