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How to: Select Web Development Environment Settings

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Visual Studio provides predefined settings collections that configure the development environment (windows, menus, and so on) for typical developer scenarios. For example, Visual Studio includes a predefined collection of settings for C# development and another one for Visual Basic development. Even if you are using predefined settings, you can customize the IDE with fonts and colors, formatting, and editor behavior.

The ASP.NET documentation assumes that when you started Visual Studio for the first time, you selected the Web Development collection of settings. This collection provides the most convenient access to commands and options for web development activities.

Note

Visual Studio offers two collections for Web development, the Web Development collection and the Web Development (Code Only) collection. The documentation assumes you are working with the Web Development collection, not the code-only collection.

If you did not select the Web Development collection of settings, you can import the predefined collection so that the environment matches the documentation.

To select Web Development settings for Visual Studio

  1. On the Tools menu, choose Import and Export Settings.

  2. On the Welcome to the Import and Export Settings Wizard page, click Reset all settings and then click Next.

  3. On the Save Current Settings page, select Yes, save my current settings, specify a location to store your settings, and then click Next.

  4. On the Choose a Default Collection of Settings to Import page, under Which collection of settings do you want to reset to?, select Web Development.

  5. Click Finish.

    Visual Studio reconfigures the IDE using the predefined settings. Under Details, the Reset Complete page lists any errors that occurred.

  6. If you want to restore selected settings that you saved earlier, do the following:

    1. On the Tools menu, choose Import and Export Settings.

    2. On Welcome to the Import and Export Settings Wizard page, select Import selected environment settings and then click Next.

    3. On the Save Current Settings page, select Yes, save my current settings.

    4. On the Choose a Default Collection of Settings to Import page, select the collection of settings that you saved earlier and then click Next.

    5. In each node (Code Analysis Settings, General Settings, Options, and so on), select the settings that you want to import.

    6. Click Finish. Visual Studio merges the selected settings with the settings from the predefined collection.