Adding a guideline to the editor in Visual Studio

by

This is originally from Sara’s blog.

It also works with almost any version of Visual Studio, you just need to change the “8.0” in the registry key to the appropriate version number for your version of Visual Studio.

The guide line shows up in the Output window too. (Visual Studio 2010 corrects this, and the line only shows up in the code editor window.)

You can also have the guide in multiple columns by listing more than one number after the color specifier:

RGB(230,230,230), 4, 80

Puts a white line at column 4 and column 80. This should be the value of a string value Guides in “Text Editor” key (see bellow).

Be sure to pick a line color that will be visisble on your background. This color won’t show up on the default background color in VS. This is the value for a light grey: RGB(221, 221, 221).

Here are the registry keys that I know of:

Visual Studio 2010: HKCU\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\Text Editor

Visual Studio 2008: HKCU\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0\Text Editor

Visual Studio 2005: HKCU\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\8.0\Text Editor

Visual Studio 2003: HKCU\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\7.1\Text Editor

For those running Visual Studio 2010, you may want to install the following extensions rather than changing the registry yourself:

These are also part of the Productivity Power Tools, which includes many other very useful extensions.

More Related Contents:

  1. How do I “Add Existing Item” an entire directory structure in Visual Studio?
  2. Toggle “Break when an exception is thrown.” using macro or keyboard shortcut
  3. Where can I get a VB6 IDE [duplicate]
  4. How to make visual studio break only on unhandled exceptions?
  5. MSBuild doesn’t copy references (DLL files) if using project dependencies in solution
  6. Get Visual Studio to run a T4 Template on every build
  7. Using Git with Visual Studio [closed]
  8. Running two projects at once in Visual Studio
  9. Difference between Rebuild and Clean + Build in Visual Studio
  10. Where does Visual Studio 2017 store its config?
  11. How can I exclude a project from a build in MSBuild?
  12. Why does the Visual Studio editor show dots in blank spaces?
  13. RunAs A different user when debugging in Visual Studio
  14. Avoiding “Press any key to continue” when running console application from Visual Studio
  15. Break in Class Module vs. Break on Unhandled Errors (VB6 Error Trapping, Options Setting in IDE)
  16. How to turn off CodeLens-References
  17. Could not find required file ‘setup.bin’
  18. How can I reference a dll in the GAC from Visual Studio?
  19. Visual Studio loading symbols
  20. Visual C++: How to disable specific linker warnings?
  21. MS-Build 2017 “Microsoft.WebApplication.targets ” is missing
  22. Green Bars in Visual Studio 2010
  23. Is Visual Studio Community a 30 day trial?
  24. Where can I find the TypeScript version installed in Visual Studio?
  25. ‘nuget’ is not recognized but other nuget commands working
  26. Visual Studio isn’t tracking changes, or checking out files from source control as I edit them
  27. How to upgrade csproj files with VS2017
  28. Read a Registry Key
  29. 500 Error Running Visual Studio ASP.NET Unit Test
  30. Structuring projects & dependencies of large winforms applications in C#

Leave a Comment