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How to: Manage the Editor and View Mode

The Editor gives you a number of ways to control the view of your code.

Changing the View Mode

SQL Server Management Studio features a view mode called Tabbed Documents, which allows you to open multiple editors and documents simultaneously and access them through tabs at the top of the Editor. You can alternatively open the Management Studio environment in Multiple Document Interface (MDI) mode, which joins windows without the tabs, and allows each window to be tiled, minimized, and so on.

To switch between view modes

  1. Click Options on the Tools menu.

  2. Click Environment. Click General.

  3. Click Tabbed documents or MDI environment.

    Note

    The changes will not take effect until SQL Server Management Studio is restarted.

Splitting the View

An Editor window can be split into two separate parts for easier editing.

To split a window

  1. Click the splitter bar (located above the scroll bar).

  2. Drag the splitter bar downward.

  3. To go back to a single pane, double-click the splitter bar dividing the two panes.

The new pane contains the same document, and any changes made to one pane are reflected in the other pane as long as that pane displays the same place in the document.

Word Wrap

When you activate Word Wrap, the horizontal scrollbar is removed and lines of code that exceed the width of the Editor's window size automatically wraps to the next displayed line rather than scrolling off the side of the window.

To activate word wrap

  1. Click Options on the Tools menu.

  2. Click Text Editor.

  3. Open the appropriate language folder (or All Languages to affect all languages).

  4. Select Word wrap.

Enabling Virtual Space Mode

In Virtual Space mode, the Editor acts as if the space past the end of each line is filled with an infinite number of spaces, allowing code lines to continue off the side of the visible screen area.

To enable Virtual Space mode

  1. Click Options on the Tools menu.

  2. Click Text Editor.

  3. Open the appropriate language folder (or All Languages to affect all languages).

  4. Select Enable virtual space.

When Virtual Space mode is not enabled, the cursor wraps from the end of one line to the first character of the next line and vice-versa.

Displaying Line Numbers

You can turn on line numbering in your code. Line numbers are useful for navigating code. For more information, see Navigating Code and Text.

Note

Turning on line numbering does not mean that the document will print with line numbers. For line numbers to print, you must select the Line numbers check box in the Page Setup command on the File menu.

To display line numbers in code

  1. Click Options on the Tools menu.

  2. Click Text Editor.

  3. Click All Languages.

  4. Click General.

  5. Select Line numbers.

To specify line numbering for only some programming languages, select Line Numbers in the appropriate folder.

Enabling Full Screen Mode

You can choose to hide all tool windows and view only document windows by enabling Full Screen mode.

To enable Full Screen mode

  • Press ALT+SHIFT+ENTER to toggle Full Screen mode.

Using Auto Hide All

To hide all the tool windows at once

  • Select Auto Hide All on the Window menu.