Accidentally Deleted 'Tools' Menu in Visual Studio

Question

I was messing around with my toolbars and menus in Visual Studio 08. I noticed that they were behaving strangely. When I closed the "Customize" dialog, my 'Tools' and 'Help' menu were gone (perhaps more, I can't remember what else was there). I don't want to reset everything, as I have been curtailing the VS environment to my exact liking for over a year now, and I have never saved those settings. I have lots of custom commands quirk fixes all around. I don't relish starting over. I guess the lesson is that I should be saving my settings regularly.

Does anyone know how to get the menus back? I didn't even know it was possible to remove the actual menus (not toolbar items)!

Thanks, Ryan

Answer 1

You could try exporting settings from a clean install, find the section with the menus and only import those? I believe the settings file is registered to visual studio so double clicking it should start the import process.

Not to mention, this would become good practice for exporting and backing up your own settings...

Answer 2

Try to right click on a toolbar click on Customize. Then you can select Menu Bar and click on reset. Not sure if it will work, but it's worth a try.