Tips and Tricks

Quick Refactoring Menu of Visual Assist offers more than refactoring

If you use Visual Assist, you are probably familiar with its Quick Refactoring Menu—available via a hovering icon or the default shortcut (Shift+Alt+Q). But, you might not appreciate how frequently the menu is available. Quick Action Menu is a more apt name.

Availability aside, the Quick Refactoring Menu is an efficient method of tapping into the features of Visual Assist because the menu contains only pertinent actions; it’s always concise. (If you examine the “Refactor (VA)” submenu of the editor’s context menu, you will find all possible actions. The entries enabled in any one scenario are the ones in the Quick Refactoring Menu.)

Available actions in the Quick Refactoring Menu depend on what Visual Assist thinks you might do and where you are: in whitespace, in a symbol, or with a selection.

blogQuickRefactoringMenu

Browse the following list of actions that can appear in the Quick Refactoring Menu. Look for unfamiliar actions and envision scenarios in which they make sense. Try a few and add them to your arsenal. If you can’t fathom when or where an action might be available, click through and find an answer in documentation.

ActionAvailability
Add Using or #includefrom a symbol declared externally
Add Memberfrom a class name
Add Similar Memberfrom a member of a class
Change Signaturefrom an existing signature
Create Declarationfrom an implementation
Create Filefrom whitespace
Create From Usagefrom an unknown symbol
Create Implementationfrom a declaration
Create Method Implementationsfrom a class declaration
Document Methodfrom the name of a method
Encapsulate Fieldfrom the declaration of a member
Extract Methodwith a selection
Find Referencefrom a symbol
Implement Interface / Virtual Methodsfrom a class name
Introduce Variablewith a selection or from whitespace
Move Implementation to Source Filefrom a method defined in a header
Move Selection to New Filewith a selection
Renamefrom a symbol
Rename File(s)from whitespace

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