Options, Text Editor, General
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 lets you change global settings for the Visual Studio Code and Text Editor. To display this dialog box, click Options on the Tools menu, expand the Text Editor folder, and then click General.
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 Customizing Development Settings in Visual Studio.
Settings
Drag and drop text editing When selected, enables you to move text by selecting it and dragging it with the mouse to another location within the current document or any other open document.
Automatic delimiter highlighting When selected, delimiter characters that separate parameters or item-value pairs, as well as matching braces, are highlighted.
Track changes When the code editor is selected, a vertical yellow line appears in the selection margin to mark code that has changed since the file was most recently saved. When you save the changes, the vertical lines become green.
Auto-detect UTF-8 encoding without signature By default, the editor detects encoding by searching for byte order marks or charset tags. If neither is found in the current document, the code editor attempts to auto-detect UTF-8 encoding by scanning byte sequences. To disable the auto-detection of encoding, clear this option.
Display
Selection margin When selected, displays a vertical margin along the left edge of the editor's text area. You can click this margin to select an entire line of text, or click and drag to select consecutive lines of text.
| Selection Margin on | Selection Margin off |
|---|---|
 |
 |
Indicator margin When selected, displays a vertical margin outside the left edge of the editor's text area. When you click in this margin, an icon and ToolTip that are related to the text appear. For example, breakpoint or task list shortcuts appear in the indicator margin. Indicator Margin information does not print.
Vertical scroll bar When selected, displays a vertical scrollbar which allows you to scroll up and down to view elements that fall outside the viewing area of the Editor. If vertical scrollbars are not available, you can use the Page Up, Page Down and cursor keys to scroll.
Horizontal scroll bar When selected, displays a horizontal scrollbar which allows you to scroll from side-to-side to view elements that fall outside the viewing area of the Editor. If horizontal scrollbars are unavailable, you can use the cursor keys to scroll.
Highlight current line When selected, displays a gray box around the line of code in which the cursor is located.
See Also
Options, Text Editor, All Languages Options, Text Editor, All Languages, Tabs Options, Text Editor, File Extension Identifying and Customizing Keyboard Shortcuts Customizing the Editor Using IntelliSense