The Productivity Power Tools extension is one of those must haves in Visual Studio, especially if you are showing Visual Studio as a presenter. Typing PresentOn in the Quick Launch (CTRL+Q) box makes the IDE font, menu items, and dialog text bigger so everything in the IDE is easier to see. My life is good with the Visual Studio 2013 Productivity Power Tools except something got messed up and I was permanently stuck in PresentOn. No amount of PresentOff in the Quick Launch would reset any fonts back to the defaults. While I could live with the big fonts on my big monitors, I just couldn’t let the bug go and had to see if I could fix it.
My first thought was to fire up the wonderful Sysinternals Process Monitor to look at which registry keys the Productivity Power Tools was setting. Before I did that I thought look at the Productivity Power Tools page and read the documentation, which is on the download page. A quick look through the Quick Launch Tasks Extensions section pointed me right at EnvFontReset, which “Resets all environment font settings to their default values (based on current theme).” Popping that into the Quick Launch after a PresentOff to ensure I had present mode off, fixed my enlarged font problem. Sometimes reading the documentation is really all you need to fix a bug.
The Productivity Power Tools add 33 additional Quick Tasks and while PresentOn and PresentOff will always be my favorites, LineNumOn and LineNumOff are two I’m using all the time these days. So you don’t have to memorize the various tasks, in the Quick Launch box, type @tasks and type some letter to see tasks containing those characters. Here’s a screen clipping showing the @tasks in action looking for the ones starting with env.
Once you type the @ symbol in the Quick Launch, you’ll see you’ve got other items like @menu, @opt, and so on that can jump you to the right place in the IDE quickly. I guess that’s why they called it Quick Launch. For completeness, here’s the list of all the Quick Tasks added by the Productivity Power Tools because it’s a good thing for you read and makes it easy for me to search for again.
|
Option |
Description |
|
CollapseRegions |
Collapses all #region tags in the current document |
|
ExpandRegion |
Expands all #region tags in the current document |
|
TxtFont- |
Decreases the text editor’s font size by 2 (min 6) |
|
TxtFont0 |
Resets the text editor’s font size to the default 10 |
|
TxtFont+ |
Increases the text editor’s font size by 2 (max 60) |
|
TxtFontReset |
Resets all text editor font settings to their default values (based on current theme) |
|
EnvFont- |
Decreases the environment’s font size by 2 (min 5) |
|
EnvFont0 |
Resets the environment’s font size to the default 9 |
|
EnvFont+ |
Increases the environment’s font size by 2 (max 59) |
|
EnvFontReset |
Resets all environment font settings to their default values (based on current theme) |
|
InsTabsOff |
Inserts spaces instead of a tab whenever a tab is inserted (all languages) |
|
InsTabsOn |
Keeps the tab that is inserted instead of inserting spaces (all languages) |
|
LineNumOff |
Turns off line numbers in the text editor (all languages) |
|
LineNumOn |
Turns on line numbers in the text editor (all languages) |
|
PresentOff |
Turns off presenter mode and returns the environment and text editor fonts to their pre-presentation values |
|
PresentOn |
Turns on presenter mode which increases environment and text editor font sizes, and sets them to certain font families, so that VS is easier to see and read on a projector |
|
PresentEdit |
Allows you to customize the Font family and Font size used by the PresentOn extension |
|
ResetToBasic |
Resets VS to Visual Basic development settings |
|
ResetToC++ |
Resets VS to Visual C++ development settings |
|
ResetToC# |
Resets VS to Visual C# development settings |
|
ResetToF# |
Resets VS to Visual F# development settings |
|
ResetToGeneral |
Resets VS to General development settings |
|
ResetToJavaScript |
Resets VS to JavaScript for Windows 8 Apps development settings |
|
ResetToLightSwitch |
Resets VS to LightSwitch development settings |
|
ResetToSQL |
Resets VS to SQL Server development settings |
|
ResetToWeb |
Resets VS to Web development settings |
|
ResetToWebCode |
Resets VS to Web (Code Only) development settings |
|
SwitchCode |
Switches between designer/code behind or header/source files, opening the file if Necessary |
|
TabSize- |
Decreases the tab and indent size by 2 (all languages) |
|
TabSize0 |
Resets the tab and indent size to the default 4 (all languages) |
|
TabSize+ |
Increases the tab and indent size by 2 (all languages) |
|
WordWrapOff |
Turns off the text editor’s word wrap (all languages) |
|
WordWrapOn |
Turns on the text editor’s word wrap (all languages) |