TODO items not showing up in Visual Studio Express 2012

Question

The TODO list items aren't showing up in Visual Studio Express 2012 for C++.

Why are the TODO list items not showing up?

This question has been asked before, but none of the answers have resolved my issue. I have done the following:

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What I have already tried:

• Checking formatting was:
  //TODO test

• Checking the task list drop down was set to Comments

• Made sure the file with the comment was open and selected

• Set Enumerate Comment Tasks to True under:
  Options->Text Editor->C/C++->Formatting->Miscellaneous->Enumerate Comment Tasks

• Restarting the application

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Solution:

• JBentley's first suggestion fixed the issue. I was missing the colon, so the correct format was:
  //TODO: text

Answer 1

Try adding a colon:

//TODO: text
//   ^^^
//  colon

This worked for me (with Enumerate Comment Tasks set to True, as you mentioned) in Visual Studio 2012 Ultimate.

Caveat: the file needs to be open AND active for it to appear in the task list in C++, according to the Visual Studio 2008 documentation:

With Visual Basic and Visual C#, the Task List displays all the comments in the solution. With Visual C++ projects, the Task List displays only the comments that are found in the file that is currently active in the editor.

I couldn't find the equivalent documentation for any later versions, but the behaviour seems to be unmodified in Visual Studio 2012 which is a shame because it makes the feature rather limited in usefulness.