When you are working in a group, it can be useful to have each developer using the exact same settings for certain areas of the integrated development environment (IDE), such as the editor. You can encourage this consistency by creating a .vssettings file for a subset of the available settings categories that all developers in your group can use. When applied, these team settings would not override any category not specified in the .vssettings file, allowing individual developers to keep customizations they have made to other areas of the IDE. For information about creating a .vssettings file, see How to: Share Settings Between Computers or Visual Studio Versions.
Visual Studio verifies that you are using the latest version of the group .vssettings file each time you start Visual Studio. Any changes to the .vssettings file are automatically applied.
To specify a .vssettings file for use across a group
From the Tools menu, choose Options.
In the Environment folder, choose Import and Export Settings.
Select Use team settings file.
Enter a UNC or local path, or click Browse to locate the group .vssettings file.
Click OK to apply the settings.
See Also