How to show white space in Visual Studio

Thursday, November 12, 2009

In Microsoft Word I usually have the paragraph symbol turned on to Show Hidden Formatting Symbols (white space) so that I can clearly see spaces, tabs, and other white space characters.

Up until recently I had no idea that Visual Studio had the same option to display white space. Jeff Atwood’s recent blog post Whitespace: The Silent Killer had a screen shot on some code showing white space characters, so I hunted around in the Visual Studio toolbars for a little bit and found the option under the Edit menu.

Edit > Advanced > View White Space

You can also use Ctrl+R, Ctrl+W to toggle it on and off.

Technorati Tags: Visual Studio,Visual Studio Tips and Tricks

5 Comments

Thanks for the article!
I accidentally turned this feature on, and couldn't find how to turn it back off.

as566 - Tuesday, November 24, 2009 5:07:36 PM

It's possible to show whitespace in SQL Management Studio 2005 by modyfing registry key to 1

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Tools\Shell\Text Editor\Visible Whitespace

jml - Monday, May 24, 2010 3:26:06 AM

In Visual Studio 2010, the command is the same. However, if you try to add it to a toolbar, you'll find it under Edit | Toggle Visual Space. Why the differing names? Beats me.

Aaron Dutton - Wednesday, December 29, 2010 2:14:05 PM

Thanks - I was looking for that!

Tim - Tuesday, February 22, 2011 7:04:46 AM

Thanks! I also accidentally turned this feature on and have searched around for a time, trying to find the way to turn it of.

Grisner - Thursday, April 28, 2011 7:03:38 AM

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