Visual Studio trick to quickly find any file in solution

re: Visual Studio trick to quickly find any file in solution

JamesCurran — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 17:24:40 GMT

>> Those of us .... probably never use it because ....

Actually we don't use it because, as of Vs2005, Case Sensitivity & Whole-Word don't have toolbar icons any more --- and, what really did it in --- as of vs2008, Find Prev & Find Next don't have toolbar icons either. So what the point of have a toolbar box for one step of the process, when to do anything with it, you'd have to use the menus or keyboard anyway.

re: Visual Studio trick to quickly find any file in solution

Tian van Heerden — Wed, 13 May 2009 15:33:32 GMT

First, an aside: it's worth noting that Ctrl+F and Ctrl+Shift+F remember their settings separately, so I always use Ctrl+F for searching within the current file, and Ctrl+Shift+F for searching the entire project.

That said, to find files by name and have all the benefits of the standard VS search (next/prev match, show results in "find results window", etc) as follows:

- use Ctrl+Shift+F to bring up dialog

- for search term enter just an asterisk: *

- under Find Options select Use: Wildcards

- under "Look at these file types" enter your search term, DOS-style wildcards are supported, e.g. menu* to find all files starting with "menu"

Voila!

re: Visual Studio trick to quickly find any file in solution

Fred Gohsman — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 17:05:22 GMT

I have not seen the search combo box on the toolbar since VS.NET. How do I get it back?

re: Visual Studio trick to quickly find any file in solution

Ryan — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 14:24:23 GMT

This was very useful. Thanks you!!