VS 2010 Tip: Select error dialog contents

Back in March when I was testing VS2010’s final versions, I tried to get the contents of a dialog box in order to look up an error.  It’s a small thing, but you can’t copy the contents of dialog boxes any more with the mouse.  I was bummed, so I submitted a Connect ticket:

“It is not possible to select the text in most dialog boxes generated for Visual Studio exceptions. For instance, when attempting to change the network mix in Web Load Tests, the dialog box refers you to a URL at go.microsoft.com for details on administration privileges required. However, it is not possible to select the URL and paste it into a browser.”

As I expected, I was told to go away, they were in RC and weren’t going to add a feature now.  That’s cool.

However, I just got an email from Neelesh on the Load Test team, and he points out that:

“As a workaround you can use "Ctrl_Insert" to copy message box text, paste in notepad and select URL. Kludgy workaround, i agree.”

Kludgy or not, it works great and I’ll use it.