Hiding the regions in Visual Studio

Question

I know VS code folding issues are an old chestnut, but I haven\'t been able to find this in all the other discussions I have browsed through:

We have a team of C# gu

Answer 1

For VS 2008 users, you can stop outlining and restart it programatically (via a macro). I found this code at http://weblogs.asp.net/rweigelt/archive/2003/07/06/9741.aspx

Imports EnvDTE

' Expands all regions in the current document    
Sub ExpandAllRegions()        
    DTE.ExecuteCommand("Edit.StopOutlining")        
    DTE.ExecuteCommand("Edit.StartAutomaticOutlining")    
End Sub

The above works for C# IDE; for some reason, VB's IDE doesn't remove outlining with regions when explicitly told to. Hope this helps!

-- appended edit:

Here's one that does work for Visual Basic .NET in Visual Studio 2008. It's a bit of brute force, but the idea is to comment all of the #region markers, expanding the outline. The next step uncomments them, returning them to their original state (not strictly true... could have rogue uses of #region in other parts of the code). This code doesn't return the Find & Replace dialog back to it's original state, either. With those caveats, this is the macro module that will perform this chore:

Imports System
Imports EnvDTE
Imports EnvDTE80
Imports EnvDTE90
Imports System.Diagnostics

Public Module MacroMod01
    Sub ExpandAllRegions()
    ' comment out all #region occurances
        DTE.ExecuteCommand("Edit.Replace")
        DTE.Find.Action = vsFindAction.vsFindActionReplaceAll
        DTE.Find.FindWhat = "#region"
        DTE.Find.ReplaceWith = "'#region"
        DTE.Find.Target = vsFindTarget.vsFindTargetCurrentDocument
        DTE.Find.MatchCase = False
        DTE.Find.MatchWholeWord = False
        DTE.Find.MatchInHiddenText = True
        DTE.Find.PatternSyntax = vsFindPatternSyntax.vsFindPatternSyntaxLiteral
        DTE.Find.ResultsLocation = vsFindResultsLocation.vsFindResultsNone
        DTE.Find.Action = vsFindAction.vsFindActionReplaceAll
        DTE.Find.Execute()

    ' uncomment all #region occurances
        DTE.ExecuteCommand("Edit.Replace")
        DTE.Find.Action = vsFindAction.vsFindActionReplaceAll
        DTE.Find.FindWhat = "'#region"
        DTE.Find.ReplaceWith = "#region"
        DTE.Find.Target = vsFindTarget.vsFindTargetCurrentDocument
        DTE.Find.MatchCase = False
        DTE.Find.MatchWholeWord = False
        DTE.Find.MatchInHiddenText = True
        DTE.Find.PatternSyntax = vsFindPatternSyntax.vsFindPatternSyntaxLiteral
        DTE.Find.ResultsLocation = vsFindResultsLocation.vsFindResultsNone
        DTE.Find.Action = vsFindAction.vsFindActionReplaceAll
        DTE.Find.Execute()

    'close the find 'n replace dialog
        DTE.Windows.Item("{CF2DDC32-8CAD-11D2-9302-005345000000}").Close()  

    End Sub

End Module

There may be a few other methods to accomplish this for VB in VS2008. I'll post as I find them.