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Helixoft Blog

Peter Macej - lead developer of VSdocman - talks about Visual Studio tips and automation

You already know that you can customize main menu and toolbars and you can place commands or macros on them. Unfortunately you cannot customize context (shortcut, right-click) menu this way in VS .NET 2002 and 2003. You simply cannot invoke context menu in Customize mode. You can do it easily in VS 2005.

For VS 2002/2003 we must use small trick. We create exact copy of context menu in VS main menu, right after the Help menu. This "mirror" menu is fully customizable. After we make changes to this copy, we copy them back to the context menu.

In more detail:

  1. Create two simple macros contextMenuCreateEditable and contextMenuUpdateLastEdited. See their source code below.
  2. Run contextMenuCreateEditable macro. This will create editable copy of context menu on main menu bar named *Code Window*.

    Copy of context menu

  3. Customize this menu in standard way. For example I want to add Comment and Uncomment selected lines commands to context menu as I use them a lot. Note that you may see more menu entries in this mirror menu then in original context menu. These are entries that are usually not shown in all contexts (for example breakpoint related).

    Customizable "mirror" context menu

    Also remember that add-ins may ignore your customizations. For example our VSdocman will always create its buttons (the last three in the picture above) after you restart VS even if you deleted them. Other addins may duplicate their buttons after your modifications. So I recommend you to temporarily unload all add-ins that insert buttons to the context menu during your customization (Tools - Add-in manager...)
  4. You can update context menu with your changes after you are finished. Just run contextMenuUpdateLastEdited macro. It will also delete the temporary mirror menu.

That's all. It should work without any problems. You can still restore original context menu in the case you somehow destroy its contents. Simply run VS with /setup switch:

devenv.exe /setup

It will run in silent mode, no IDE will be shown.

Caution: Doing this will delete all customizations you have made to Visual Studio .NET menus, toolbars, and command groups. They are rebuilt according to the loaded add-ins and packages. And here is the code:

    Private editedContextMenu As Microsoft.Office.Core.CommandBar = Nothing
    Private tmpContextMenu As Microsoft.Office.Core.CommandBar = Nothing
    '''<summary>Creates editable mirror context menu
    '''on main menu bar.</summary>
    Sub contextMenuCreateEditable()
        Dim parent, menu, tmpMenu As Microsoft.Office.Core.CommandBar
        Dim tmpPopUp, contextPopUp As Microsoft.Office.Core.CommandBarPopup
        Dim ctrl, ctrl2 As Microsoft.Office.Core.CommandBarControl

        parent = DTE.CommandBars("MenuBar")
        menu = DTE.CommandBars("Code Window")
        tmpPopUp = DirectCast(parent.Controls.Add(Microsoft.Office.Core.MsoControlType.msoControlPopup, _
                ), Microsoft.Office.Core.CommandBarPopup)
        tmpPopUp.Caption = "*" & menu.Name & "*"
        tmpMenu = tmpPopUp.CommandBar
        For Each ctrl In menu.Controls
            ctrl2 = ctrl.Copy(tmpMenu)
            ctrl2.BeginGroup = ctrl.BeginGroup
        Next
        editedContextMenu = menu
        tmpContextMenu = tmpMenu
    End Sub

    '''<summary>Copies edited mirror menu to context menu.</summary>
    Sub contextMenuUpdateLastEdited()
        Try
            Dim ctrl, ctrl2 As Microsoft.Office.Core.CommandBarControl

            If editedContextMenu Is Nothing Or tmpContextMenu Is Nothing Then
                Return
            End If

            For Each ctrl In editedContextMenu.Controls
                ctrl.Delete()
            Next
            For Each ctrl In tmpContextMenu.Controls
                ctrl2 = ctrl.Copy(editedContextMenu)
                ctrl2.BeginGroup = ctrl.BeginGroup
            Next
            CType(tmpContextMenu.Parent, Microsoft.Office.Core.CommandBarControl).Delete()
        Catch ex As System.Exception
        End Try
    End Sub

If you don't know it yet, you can learn how to create and run a macro.

 

 

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