Formatting, XML, Text Editor, Options Dialog Box

Note

This article applies to Visual Studio 2015. If you're looking for the latest Visual Studio documentation, see Visual Studio documentation. We recommend upgrading to the latest version of Visual Studio. Download it here

This dialog box allows you to specify the formatting settings for the XML Editor. You can access the Options dialog box from the Tools menu.

Note

These settings are available when you select the Text Editor folder, the XML folder, and then the Formatting option from the Options dialog box.

Attributes

Preserve manual attribute formatting Attributes are not reformatted. This is the default.

Note

If the attributes are on multiple lines, the editor indents each line of attributes to match the indentation of the parent element.

Align attributes each on their own line Aligns the second and subsequent attributes vertically to match the indentation of the first attribute. The following XML text is an example of how the attributes would be aligned.

<item id = "123-A"
      name = "hammer"
      price = "9.95">
</item>

Auto Reformat

On paste from the Clipboard Reformats XML text pasted from the Clipboard.

On completion of end tag Reformats the element when the end tag is completed.

Mixed Content

Preserve mixed content by default Determines whether the editor reformats mixed content. By default, the editor attempts to reformat mixed content, except when the content is found in an xml:space="preserve" scope.

If an element contains a mix of text and markup, the contents are considered to be mixed content. The following is an example of an element with mixed content.

<dir>c:\data\AlphaProject\
  <file readOnly="false">test1.txt</file>
  <file readOnly="false">test2.txt</file>
</dir>

See Also

XML Document Properties, Properties Window XML Editor Components