Customize how Find in Files results are displayed in the Find Results Window - The Ultimate Visual Studio Tips and Tricks Blog - Site Home - MSDN Blogs

You can customize your Find in Files results to show what you want to see and how you want to see it.

Example: You don’t want to view the entire file path shown in the Find Results tool window.

Surely he jests. Right? No, fellow mere mortals, he does not.
  1. Open up RegEdit
  2. Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\Find
  3. Add a new string called Find result format with a value of $f$e($l,$c):$t\r\n
 Gamechanger. ;^) It’s the little things, man, the little things.


UPDATE 6 July 2018: This got a lot more complicated. From that answer (and, now, personal experience): You now have to load what’s essentially a compressed version of a registry key set that lives in %localappdata%\Microsoft\VisualStudio\15.0_[instanceid]{RootSuffix}\privateregistry.bin, mount privateregistry.bin in RegEdit, do the same string value hack as above, then dismount privateregistry.bin from RegEdit. Bizarre.

But it’s even more bizarre that this isn’t a “real”, supported setting in Visual Studio yet.

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