30 Favorite Visual Studio Keyboard Shortcuts

Here is a list of my favorite Visual Studio Keyboard Shortcuts that I use all the time to increase my productivity and perform repetitive tasks with ease. I have tested these shortcuts on VS 2010, but most of them work on VS 2008 too. You can bookmark this link and make them your favorites too!

Note: I am using the US Keyboard Layout!

Navigation Shortcuts

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Ctrl + ]	Moves the cursor to the matching brace in the source file
Ctrl + Hyphen (-)	Moves cursor to its previous position
Ctrl + Shift + Hyphen (-)	Moves cursor to the next browsed line of code
Shift + F7	Switch between the Design and Source View of the document
Ctrl + Tab	Displays the IDE Navigator with the current document selected. Allows you to navigate open documents. Also try Alt+W+2
Ctrl + Shift + F	Displays the ‘Find in Files’ tab of the ‘Find and Replace’ dialog box
Ctrl + I	Activates Incremental Search by searching for the next occurrence of the input text. You can even use F3
Shift + F12	Displays a list of all references for the symbol selected
Ctrl + /	Moves focus to the Find/Command box

Editing Shortcuts

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Ctrl + K + C	Comment a Line or an entire selected block
Ctrl + K + U	Uncomment a Line or an entire selected block
Ctrl + L	Cuts the current line
Ctrl + C, Ctrl + V	Duplicate a line

Window Shortcuts

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Shift + Alt + Enter	Toggle Full Screen Mode
Ctrl + M + O	Collapses all Regions to provide a high level overview of the types and members in the source file
Ctrl + M + L	Toggles all previously collapsed Regions
/	Collapses all tabs in a Toolbox
*	Expands all tabs in a Toolbox. If * does not work, use Shift + 8 for ENU keyboards as explained here
Shift + Esc	Closes the current Tool Window with focus

Code Completion Shortcuts

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Ctrl + Period (.)	Expands the Smart Tag Menu (Usually when you rename a method or need to add a ‘using’ statement). You can also use Alt+Shift+F10
Tab	Inserts expanded code snippet using a shortcut (for example enter the keyword ‘class’ and hit Tab twice)
Ctrl + Space	Completes the current word in the completion list

Other Shortcuts

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Ctrl + Shift + B	Build the solution. You can even try F6
F5	Start the application with Debugging
Ctrl + F5	Start the application without Debugging
F9	Sets or Removes a breakpoint at the current line
Ctrl + Shift + S	Save all unsaved files
Ctrl + Alt + L	Show Solution Explorer
Ctrl + Shift + A	Displays the Add New Item dialog box
Alt + Shift + A	Displays the Add Existing Item dialog box

You can also download the Visual Studio 2010 Keyboard Shortcuts Poster