Visual Studio Immediate window: how to see more than the first 100 items

Question

I am trying to see the properties of an object with over 300 properties in the Immediate Window of Visual Studio 2005. Only the first 100 items are displayed, followed by this caption:

 < More... (The first 100 of 306 items were displayed.) >

I am trying to see the rest of the items, but can't figure it out.

I realize that I could see these in a Watch window, but that's not the same.

Prochronism

Answer 1

If you add your object to the watch window, then expand the properties so that all are displayed. Then Ctrl+A and Copy. You can then paste in excel to get an organized list of properties and their values.

Percutaneous

I've been sabotaging myself for 5 years by not doing this. – Sahaptin

Answer 2

Sometimes its useful to see the list in the immediate window rather than looking in the watch window. You can easily see more results than the first 100 by using:

yourList.Skip(100).ToArray()

Which really doesn't take long to write and works well - was useful for me.

Update: As pointed out in the comments below, this answer is actually wrong and applicable ONLY to collections and NOT to objects with lots of properties. I'm leaving it here as lots of people seem to have found it useful.

Selfcontradiction

Thanks for adding to the subject. As you have discovered, sometimes "old" questions have answers to today's problems! – Prochronism

Not sure what do you mean by "yourList" here? Do you mean the object which I am trying to view? If so, does not work for me in Visual Studio Pro 2013 – Virelay

yourList would be the object (collection) you're trying to view and would usually be of type IList<T> or IEnumerable<T> . Hope that helps. – Selfcontradiction

I guess that works if you want to display remaining items in a collections, but this answer is useless for Properties, as mentioned in the original questions. I don't know why this is the chosen answer. Gene Whitaker answer bellow is much more useful IMO. – Impearl

@IanRoutledge I think you should qualify your answer to take the above comments into consideration. Your answer isn't applicable for what the OP asked (or for what I needed), and it's unfortunate that one has to read the comments to determine that. – Destinydestitute

Fair point, you're right this answer is actually wrong! Have added an update comment - feel free to amend etc – Selfcontradiction

Answer 3

The immediate window was designed to be a quick view tool. If you want to see more detail, you will have to view it in either the Watch Window or the Quick Watch Window.

Another option is to write a Visual Studio AddIn that operates similarly to the Immediate Window, but has more options.

Bio

Thanks. I was hoping that I had just overlooked something simple, something that doesn't involve so much clicking around, something that would make it easy to scroll through hundreds of items. I think you have identified the best alternatives. – Prochronism

@DOK: There's a better answer to this question now that may be worthy of being accepted. – Schinica

@Gabriel Was it really designed to be a quick view tool? It seems to be so much more than that, although it has and is useful for that capability. It seems to be unique, and useful to me, for evaluation, both prescient and speculative. I believe it is more than a "What Is" machine with which to view, but a "What If" machine with which to explore. – Paderna

Answer 4

I always create an extension method to export objects to xml when debugging like this. It's very useful for troubleshooting object data. Here is what I use:

public static void SerializeToXML(this object entity)
{
    System.Xml.Serialization.XmlSerializer writer = new System.Xml.Serialization.XmlSerializer(entity.GetType());

    System.IO.StreamWriter file = new System.IO.StreamWriter(string.Format(@"{0}\{1}.xml", Directory.GetCurrentDirectory(), entity.GetType().Name));
    writer.Serialize(file, entity);
    file.Close();
}

It's not 100% full proof, but most of the time it is perfect. It will create an xml file in the application directory with the objects name as the file name. In the immediate window you can just type the object name then .SerializeToXML().

so: myList.SerializeToXML()

Mackintosh

Answer 5

Its an old question but to get the properties and values of an object during runtime a more reasonable solution with Quickwatch window is here:

1. Open Quickwatch during Debug mode

2. Type in your Variablename and press Enter

3. Press CTRL + A and CTRL + C in order to select and copy all Properties. You need to expand those which contains values and are non primitive types.

4. Paste to your favorite editor.

Dermoid

This is also showing me only 100 of 343 – Between

Answer 6

1. On the Locals panel, you can add it to the watch window:

2. And rename it to cast it or show a range:

3. You can also copy its pointer address and use the Debug -> Windows -> Memory to show the memory contents:

See also:

1. How do you use the Immediate Window in Visual Studio?
2. How to display a dynamically allocated array in the Visual Studio debugger?
3. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/visualstudio/visual-studio-2015/debugger/format-specifiers-in-cpp?view=vs-2015&redirectedfrom=MSDN

Papyrology