VS 2010: How can I change the order of the Project Properties>Settings?

Question

I have dozens of application settings and I'd like to view them in a different order than they were entered. Is it possible to change the order?

I found the entries in the app.config file, but changing the order there does not make a difference within Visual Studio.

one question, why? If you really want you could edit the file out of visual studio... — Jeremy Thompson, Mar 07 '13 at 22:40
I have more than 100 settings. Sometimes new ones are required that are related to others, so I'd like to see them together. Editing app.config did not result in any change. — Rachel Hettinger, Mar 07 '13 at 22:57
I found the duplicate: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3831141/visual-studio-application-settings-rearrange — Jeremy Thompson, Mar 07 '13 at 23:41
Thanks for finding that... I looked and looked for an answer before I posted this question. — Rachel Hettinger, Mar 07 '13 at 23:48

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 07 '13 at 23:35

I see what you're trying to do....

Follow these steps.

1). Right click on the Settings.settings file located in the Properties folder of your application.
2). Click "Properties"
3). When the Properties window pops up, select the text for the "full path" of the Settings file, and copy it.
4). Open Notepad.
5). Go to File -> Open in Notepad
6). Paste the previously copied full path to the settings file.
7). The file should look something like this:

enter image description here

8). Re-order the nodes marked "Setting" to put them in the order you wish them to be in. For instance, if you want "Setting" to appear before "Jeremy", change the file to look like this:

enter image description here

9). Save the file. Next time you reopen it, it should be in the order you want.

Alternatively, I would create a prefix for your commonly changed settings, and you can actually sort the list alphabetically by setting key name.

VS 2010: How can I change the order of the Project Properties>Settings?

1 Answers1