VS2013: Restore classic find window and wildcard search

Question

They replaced the Find window (Ctrl+F) in Visual Studio 2013, in comparison with Visual Studio 2010. It is now a minimalistic search bar like window in the top right corner of the editor area and it does instant search in the actual file. This drives me crazy. Not to mention the absence of the "wildcard" option and the ambiguous visualization of switches (very thin border around [Aa], [.*], etc...). All in all, I don't like it.

Unfortunately the "Find in files" (Ctrl+Shift+F) now also don't have wildcards. At least it remained non-instant and big.

• Can I restore the wildcard search somehow?
• Can I have Ctrl+F to raise a window for searching in the current file?

Do you know any helpful settings or extensions for these goals?

Answer 1

If I understood your question The Visual Studio 2013’s Find and Replace Dialog provides the option for the user to find and replace text in the project using regular expressions or wildcards.,I guess this is what you are looking for.

• Open the Find and Replace Dialog in Visual Studio.
• In the Find and Replace Dialog, click the “+” button before the label “Find Options” to expand the options.
• The (a) + button opens up the expression builder that lets you choose the regular expression to search for. This can be a useful feature especially when you dont know regular expression very well but want to try out one of the predefined regular expression.