Zooming in the visual studio form designer

Question

I'm using the Visual Studio 2013 form designer to edit a form. The size of the form in the designer window is too big so I want to zoom out.

In applications like Photoshop or Blend I could (among other things) use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-0 to fit the design to the screen.

In Visual Studio how do I zoom out in the form design window?

Answer 1

in VS 2022 I've been doing some C# and had the same problem with the default grid element (the form) being zoomed way out in the Designer, so it looked extremely small, and the controls were super tiny. I found the following Microsoft page that explains how to change the zoom feature (yes, Visual Studio 2022 has a zoom feature). https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/desktop/winforms/controls/how-to-set-grid-options-for-all-windows-forms?view=netframeworkdesktop-4.8

So, I went into the Tools menu, down to Options, and then in the Options window I scrolled down to the XAML Designer General option. I changed the "Zoom by using" setting to "Mouse Wheel". Using "Ctrl + Mouse Wheel" didn't work for me. And I changed the "Default Zoom Setting" to "Last Used". I closed VS and opened it again. "Last Used" didn't work for me. So, I changed the "Default Zoom Setting" back to "Fit all". Closed VS again (you need to do this for the new settings to take effect). Opened VS again. And everything worked. I am able to use the mouse wheel to zoom in and out of the form. The settings I'm using are "Mouse Wheel" and "Fit All".

Answer 2

The Windows Forms designer doesn't zoom. The WPF one does because it's vector based, but WinForms is pixel based you don't get the zooming.

If you've got multiple monitors you can drag the designer to a second screen and work with it that way, or you can press Alt+Shift+Enter to toggle full screen and work with it that way.