Question

I do WinForms and Web development in Visual Studio 2010. The web developers use a tab size of four spaces, and the WinForms developers use a tab size of two.

Since I switch backwards and forwards between the two, I was wondering if there’s a quick way to do it, without having to navigate the options every single time?

Answer 1

There’s not a dedicated shortcut, but let’s make one!

Simply hit Alt+F11 to bring up the Macros editor and add the following code to a new module:

Imports System
Imports EnvDTE
Imports EnvDTE80
Imports EnvDTE90
Imports EnvDTE90a
Imports EnvDTE100
Imports System.Diagnostics

Public Module Tabspaces
    Sub TwoTabSpaces()
        Dim tabs As Properties

        tabs = DTE.Properties("TextEditor", "AllLanguages")
        tabs.Item("TabSize").Value = 2
        tabs.Item("IndentSize").Value = 2

    End Sub

    Sub FourTabSpaces()
        Dim tabs As Properties

        tabs = DTE.Properties("TextEditor", "AllLanguages")
        tabs.Item("TabSize").Value = 4
        tabs.Item("IndentSize").Value = 4

    End Sub

End Module

Then save your macros and bring up the Options window from the Tools menu and choose Environment->Keyboard:

Here, you can search for commands containing ‘macros‘ and you should see your TwoTabSpaces() and FourTabSpaces() listed.
You can now assign a keyboard shortcut to these macros. In the picture above, I’ve chosen Alt+T, Alt+2 and Alt+T, Alt+4 respectively (t=Tabs, 2=two spaces etc.)

You can customize them as you wish, of course.