Effective Use of Visual Studio 2005 - Keyboard Shortcuts

As a hardcore developer I found that typing is easy to me then using mouse. Mouse is an obstacle. Taking hands off the keyboard is time consuning. It takes me out of comfort zone. I like to use keyboard where ever possible and efficient. Thanks to the developers of Visual studio 2005, they provided keyboard shortcuts to the most frequest tasks.

Though the use of named commands is always recommended instead of keyboard shortcuts. But I found that these key strokes are most common and no one reassign these to custome actions. Its safe to get used to these shortcuts.

Here is a list of my favourite shortcusts.

Tool Boxes And Windows
  • CTRL+ALT+L: View Solution Explorer. I use Auto Hide for all of my tool windows to maximize screen real estate. Whenever I need to open the Solution Explorer, it’s just a shortcut away.
  • CTRL+ALT+X: Toolbox Window
  • CTRL+ALT+O: Output Window
  • CTRL+\, E: Error List Window
  • CTRL+\, T: Task List Window
  • F7: Toggle between Designer and Source views.
  • CTRL+PgDn: Toggle between Design and Source View in HTML editor.
  • SHIFT+ALT+Enter: Toggle full screen mode. This is especially useful if you have a small monitor. Since I upgraded to dual 17? monitors, I no longer needed to use full screen mode.
  • CTRL+SHIFT+A: Add New Item Window
  • ALT+F+F: Recent Files List

Building, Running And Debugging
  • F10: Debug - Step over.
  • F5: debug - Start
  • F11: debug - Step into
  • SHIFT+F11: Debug - step out
  • CTRL+F10: Debug - run to cursor
  • F9: Toggle Breakpoint
  • CTRL+SHIF+B: Build Solution. Related shortcuts:
  • ALT+B, U: Build selected Project
  • ALT+B, R: Rebuild Solution

Code Window

  • CTRL+D or CTRL+/: Find combo
  • CTRL+M, O: Collapse to Definitions.
  • CTRL+M, M: Toggle Outline Expension. Collapsed will become expanded and expanded will become collapsed.
  • CTRL+K, CTRL+C: Comment block.
  • CTRL+K, CTRL-U: Uncomment selected block
  • CTRL+-: Go back to the previous location in the navigation history.
  • CTRL+SHIFT+-: Go to the next location in the navigation history.
  • CTRL++: Select from last mouse pointer position to current mouse pointer position.
  • CTRL+ALT+Down Arrow: Show dropdown of currently open files. Type the first few letters of the file you want to select.
  • CTRL+K, D: Format code.
  • CTRL+L: Delete entire line.
  • CTRL+G: Go to line number. This is useful when you are looking at an exception stack trace and want to go to the offending line number.
  • CTRL+K, X: Insert "surrounds with" code snippet.
  • CTRL+K, K: Toggle bookmark.
  • CTRL+K, N: Next bookmark.
  • CTRL+K, P: Previous bookmark.
  • CTRL+K, L: Clear bookmark.
    CTRL+K, I: Quick Info
  • F12: Go to definition of a variable, object, or function.
  • SHIFT+F12: Find all references of a function or variable.

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