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One of the coolest features that Microsoft has added to the Visual Studio 2008 list of new features is the possibility of the settings for your Integrated Development Environment, or for Visual Studio itself. The cool thing that they've done is, they've given you the ability that when you load Visual Studio 2008 onto your machine if you load it onto the same machine that had Visual Studio 2005 then you can import the settings from 2005. Now, in this video about Customizing the IDE I want to show you how you can take any customizations from Visual Studio 2005, which you've probably been working in if you're a developer who's been working for a while, and you can bring those into 2008, and you can also use this for some neat tips and tricks. For example, let's say that I get into a Docking nightmare and I've got stuff docked all kinds of places and I'm not really sure how I did this and how to get it back, or, from time to time, and I don't want to shock and disillusion you, but from time to time the IDE can become confused. I know you're shocked to hear that a computer can do wrong things, or get confused, but trust me, it can happen, right? So, there are a couple of things we can do here. First of all, you'll notice on my machine we can, if I click on Start, you'll notice that I had Visual Studio 2005 on this computer and I was working with it in developing and then I loaded Visual Studio 2008. Now that tells you a couple of things right off the top. Number one, these two development environments can co-exist on the same machine, so you can load 2008 and start to play with it and continue to work in Visual Studio 2005 until you're ready to jump to 08. Now, 08's not so different that you wouldn't want to jump right away, but there could be reasons why you don't want to, but let me show you a very cool feature. If you go to Tools Ð and we've been going down to Options in a couple of other videos, but notice just up a couple of steps, Import and Export Settings Ð really cool feature. This opens up the Import and Export settings wizard and notice I can, first of all, Export Selected Environment Settings, and if I hit Next, it's going to say: What settings do you want to do? General Settings Ð and I can expand this and I can see the Browsers, the Command Window Aliases, Find Options, Menu and Command Bar Customizations, I can click and choose which one of these I want to save and then I can do Help Filters, and any options that are out there, and it's warning me about some things in there, but we won't get into that right now. But I can just say All Settings, and I can click Next and it can say: What do you want to call this? What do you want to name this file and where do you want to put it? OK? I'm going to Cancel this, or actually I'm just going to go Previous. So, I can Export the settings of all my Windowed Settings and stuff and Docks and everything, or Docking Configuration. Then notice I can Import settings. Now what's cool is, I can import these settings from another file, and I can go grab those things, so I can actually Import from my previous 2005 world, and then, here's the big one, I can Reset All Settings, and this will take me back to the Default for the way Visual Studio was when I first installed it. Now, from time to time if your Menu Bar gets confused, if you lose some of your Docking Windows and can't figure out how to get them back, you can just simply Reset All Settings and it will take care of that. And notice, if you hit Next, it'll ask you: Do you want to first save your current settings, just in case you actually do decide you like them better after all, or you can say No, just reset my settings, overwrite the current ones, get me back to where I was so that I can work in this thing again. And you can very easily reset all your customizations. Now, in other videos, I did a video on the Toolbox, I did a video on Docking, did one on Toolbars, managing screen real estate, there are a lot of things you can customize here and there are a lot of ways to get confused, and so these Tool Import Export Settings, it's a little bit surprising, or a little bit hidden, but if you go Tools, Import Export Settings, you can actually reset this thing and get back to where you first started if you confuse yourself, OK? Now, I will tell you there are some books out there on the market about tips and tricks in Windows Visual Studio 2008. Go dig through these things. Go to Google. You can do some Google searches on tips and tricks. There are all kinds of cool things you can do here, OK? So again, Microsoft's given you a lot of leeway here in customizing this environment to help your productivity, so take advantage of that. Don't fall into this trap of just opening it up and using it the way it is, OK? Dig around, play with it a little bit, make it work the way you want it to.