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How to: Manage Editor Modes

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You can display the Visual Studio Code Editor in various display modes.

Note

The dialog boxes and menu commands you see might differ from those described in Help depending on your active settings or edition. To change your settings, choose Import and Export Settings on the Tools menu. For more information, see Visual Studio Settings.

Changing the display mode of the IDE

The Visual Studio integrated development environment (IDE) provides two display modes, tabbed documents mode and multiple documents mode.

  • Tabbed documents - When the IDE is launched in this mode, documents opened in instances of the Code Editor are automatically arranged on tabbed panes.

  • Multiple documents - When the IDE is launched in this mode, tool windows can be joined together, tiled, or minimized along the edges of the IDE.

To select an IDE display mode

  1. Select Options from the Tools menu, and within the Environment folder, choose General.

    The General, Environment, Options Dialog Box opens.

  2. Under Window layout, select either Tabbed documents or Multiple documents.

  3. Select OK.

    For further information, see How to: Arrange and Dock Windows.

Enabling Full Screen mode

You can choose to hide all tool windows and view only document windows by enabling Full Screen mode.

To enable Full Screen mode

  • Press ALT+SHIFT+ENTER to enter or exit Full Screen mode.

    -- or --

  • Issue the command View.Fullscreen in the Command window.

Enabling Virtual Space mode

In Virtual Space mode, spaces are inserted at the end of each line of code. Select this option to position comments at a consistent point next to your code.

To enable Virtual Space mode

  1. Select Options from the Tools menu.

  2. Expand the Text Editor folder, and choose All Languages to set this option globally, or choose a specific language folder. (For example, to turn on line numbers only in Visual Basic, choose the Basic, Text Editor options.)

  3. Select General options, and under Settings, select Enable Virtual Space.

    Note

    Virtual Space is enabled in Column Selection mode. When Virtual Space mode is not enabled, the insertion point moves from the end of one line directly to the first character of the next.

See Also

Concepts

Customizing the Editor

How to: Print Code in the Editor

Reference

Fonts and Colors, Environment, Options Dialog Box