Visual Studio IDE: go to previous match in multi caret/cursor

Question

Consider the following setup:

I have:

Test 1

T|est 2

Test 3

where | is the current cursor position. Application of Shft + Alt + . first highlights Test of Test 2 . Subsequent application of Shft + Alt + . takes one to Test of Test 3 . Is there a way to reverse this direction of movement and go from Test of Test 2 to Test of Test 1 ?

The command Edit.InsertNextMatchingCaret is default mapped to Shft + Alt + . There does not seem to be a command Edit.InsertPreviousMatchingCaret .

See gif below for visual description of the issue:

Answer 1

Unfortunately, AFAIK, there's no out-of-the-box way to achieve this using keyboard shortcuts. Moving the caret works only in one direction in muti-caret editing. To select the previous match, you may use one of two options:

• Option 1: Select the match manually using keyboard and mouse:

  Press Ctrl + Alt and then use the mouse to manually select the previous match (eg, double click on the "Test" word in the "Test 1" line).

• Option 2: If you want to rely on hotkeys only, you may use the following workaround:

  1. Press Shift + Alt + . to select the next match.
  2. Press Shift + Alt + / to move the caret/selection to the following match.
  3. Repeat step #2 until you get to to the desired match.

  Here's a demo: