Visual Studio Tip: Using Incremental Search


Many times when coding I need to quickly find text within the current document. I ran across a feature in Visual Studio 2008 and Visual Studio 2010 called incremental search that solve this. In this blog post we will look at how we can use incremental search.

Lets say that we want to look for the word treenode within the following code

1. Press CTRL + I

Note: Look at the bottom left of your code editor to see that incremental search is activated

2. Start type treenode

Note: Look at the bottom left of your code editor to see the letters entered and the first instance is highlighted as you type

3. Finish typing the word treenode as shown below

Note: Finish typing the word and the instance is highlighted

4. Press CTRL + I to move to the next instance of the word

5. Press CTRL + SHIFT + I to move back to the previous instance

Note: you are now in Reverse incremental search

6. Press ESC to exit the incremental search

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Thomas Robbins
