Lock down placement of panes from Visual Studio

Question

Ok, if you\'re like me, you\'ve accidentally dragged one of the many, many panes in Visual Studio around and spent some tedious time getting things back in order again.

Answer 1

When you have your pane layouts (as well as your fonts, toolbars, colour schemes and whatnot) the way you like them, export your settings (Tools, Import and Export Settings) and give the file a sensible name. Then if you have a spot of accidental dragging, just import your saved ones. This is better than Reset Layout if your preferred layout is not the default.

Answer 2

Feature request on User Voice:

Lock/Unlock Docked Window Layout

Answer 3

As far as I know, no. But everything for getting for working with tabs and tab groups is inside the "Window" menu item in VS. But if you want to reset everything back to the way it was why not try:

Window -> Reset Windows Layout

You might also want to check out this Arranging and Using Windows in Visual Studio, I think you might be able to create a workspace, save it and if needed reset back to it after you moved windows around.

Answer 4

Export your settings according to Mar's answer and then check out this extension:

http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/a79072f7-3109-44a0-95c0-9c50e729d6a3

A real lifesaver :)

Answer 5

You can reset Visual Studio windows back to the default by going to Window->Reset Window Layout (Visual Studio 10). Other versions have something similar. This helps the tedium on dragging the windows back in order.