Switch to tab by typing a substring of its name in Visual Studio 2005

Question

Is there a way to navigate between tabs in VS similar to the emacs iswtichb-mode or Firefox ubiquity switch tab mode (https://wiki.mozilla.org/Labs/Ubiquity/Ubiquity_0.1_Author_Tutorial#Switching_Tabs) ?

In these apps, you just type a substring of the title of the tab (or buffer for emacs) to switch to this tab. For instance, to switch to a tab named "App_Code/Data/MyProgram.cs", you just invoke the tab switching command and then type "Progr" for instance to list all the tab whose name matches this string, including "MyProgram.cs".

It's much easier to switch between tabs this way when you have a lot of documents open and when you now where to go (which is the case in most situation)

Thank you !

Answer 1

No this is not a supported operation in Visual Studio. It can be done by adding a Macro or via a plug-in though.

Answer 2

ReSharper will do something similar to this for you. It's not free, but it has many really nice features.

Invoke with Ctrl+T, then start typing the name of a file. It will provide you with a list of matches while you type. It's not limited to open tabs; it searches all files in the solution.

The search is intelligent. For example, if you have ThisIsMyClass.cs, typing 'TIMC' or 'ThisIMCla' will still match based on the idea that capital letters begin new words in file names.

Answer 3

Visual Assist has a function "Open File in Solution" (shortcut Shift-Alt-O), where you can type the filename and list of matching files from the solution is shown. Once you are happy with the selection, you can confirm it by pressing enter, or you can click the file you like with mouse.

As added bonus, this way you can also switch into files which you do not have open in a tab yet.