How can I prevent the "You have mixed tabs and spaces. Fix this?" message?

visual-studio-2013 code-editor
B. Clay Shannon picture B. Clay Shannon · Jun 2, 2014 · Viewed 34.1k times · Source

Any time I paste code into my .cs file, I get the dreaded "You have mixed tabs and spaces. Fix this?" message. It has three options:

Tabify
Untabify
Don't show again

I first tried "Tabify" a few times, until I was finally fed up and selected "Don't show again"; but that was a psyche - I still get it. I even tried "Untabify" but to no avail. Is there some setting I can tweak to prevent this re[o]curring problem?

VisualStudio2013 tabify untabify

Answer

Anthony Chu picture Anthony Chu · Jun 3, 2014

Sounds like you have the Visual Studio Productivity Power Tools 2013 installed. Go into its settings and turn off "Fix Mixed Tabs"...

Tools -> Options -> Productivity Power Tools -> Turn Extensions On/Off

If you have the default VS settings, tabs in the editor are converted to spaces. So (in theory) if you clicked Untabify when the message comes up, it should convert all tabs to spaces and the errors should not appear next time. Are you working with other developers who have different tab settings in their IDE?

UPDATE: In Visual Studio 2017 and onward, this is a stand-alone extension named "Fix Mixed Tabs" that can be disabled or uninstalled from "Extensions and Updates" window (Tools > Extensions and Updates).

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