Customize Your Toolbars in Visual Studio 2010: Toolbars Tab

Menu:  Tools->Customize
Command:  Tools.Customize
Versions:  2010
Published:  7/28/2010
Code:  vstipEnv0030

 

You can customize any toolbar in Visual Studio 2010.  Just click on the drop-down to the right of any toolbar then click on "Add or Remove Buttons":

 

Then click on "Customize":

 

 

Alternatively, you can go to Tools -> Customize on the Menu Bar:

 

 

 

Whichever option you choose, you will get the Customize Dialog:

 

 

 

Notice that the Toolbars Tab lists all the available toolbars.  You can click on the "New" button to create a custom toolbar.  You will be prompted to give the new toolbar a name:

 

Once you name it, you can delete the custom toolbar by clicking the "Delete" button or change it by clicking the "Modify Selection" to rename or relocate the toolbar:

 

You can rename custom toolbars through the "Modify Selection" but default toolbars can't be changed in this way:

 

 

 

The "Keyboard" button at the bottom of the dialog takes you to the Tools -> Options -> Keyboard area (details on this in a separate tip):

Comments

• Anonymous
  May 11, 2011
  Is there proper documentation for this somewhere? As a person who customized previous versions of Visual Studio, I find that VS 2010 makes it much harder, in fact I have given up on a number of occasions because its not worth the effort. In previous versions I could drag and drop (ctrl to copy) a menu item from one place to another, now I have to go through a UI that requires much deeper knowledge of how things are classified. When I want to add a command to a menu, there are almost thirty categories (Actions, Addins etc.) and many of them have lots of items. How are people supposed to find anything, especially a custom command from a third party. Is there a way to get back the previous behavior because the new system is a failure.

• Anonymous
  May 11, 2011
  A, Here is the documentation:  msdn.microsoft.com/.../wdee4yb6.aspx It's not great but it works as far as I know.  I think we are still going through a growing phase with VS2010 and all later versions where we will begin to identify areas that were not implemented well (i.e. local Help) and start fixing elements now that we have converted over to WPF on the IDE. Z