Richard Banks posted about a registry key for just such a tweak.
Visual Studio 2012 (Full)
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\11.0\General
DWORD: SuppressUppercaseConversion
Value: 1
In PowerShell, you can run this to set that registry key and the uppercase goes away.
Set-ItemProperty -Path HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\11.0\General -Name SuppressUppercaseConversion -Type DWord -Value 1
Visual Studio Express 2012
The above registry key is not the one that will affect Visual Studio Express 2012 RC. A comment by FormatC showed up on Banks post about the key for Express. You can find that key mentioned in Mike Gleason's answer or run the following PowerShell command to set it.
Set-ItemProperty -Path HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\VSWinExpress\11.0\General -Name SuppressUppercaseConversion -Type DWord -Value 1
Visual Studio Express 2012 for Web
Set-ItemProperty -Path HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\VWDExpress\11.0\General -Name SuppressUppercaseConversion -Type DWord -Value 1
Visual Studio 2013
Replace 11.0
with 12.0
in the registry keys above.
Visual Studio 2015 Developer Preview
Replace 11.0
with 14.0
in the registry keys above.
Yes - in the new Visual Studio 2013 (as in VS 2012), MS reinforced their design decision to make ALL CAPS MENU ITEMS the default. The methods for reverting the menu style are almost the same methods used for Visual Studio 2012, which has been discussed before.
Update (after Visual Studio 2013 Update 4)
As of Visual Studio 2013 Update 4 you can go into Tools > Options > Environment
and uncheck Turn off upper case in the menu bar
Before Visual Studio 2013 Update 4:
You need to create a specific registry key if you want "old-style" menus back.
First Variant: Since
Package Manager Console is
Powershell, select menu options
TOOLS /
Library Package Manager /
Package Manager Console and enter and run
Set-ItemProperty -Path HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\12.0\General -Name SuppressUppercaseConversion -Type DWord -Value 1
(as a single line).
Second Variant: Open up a Command Prompt (
win+
r,
cmd
,
enter) and enter and run
REG ADD HKCU\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\12.0\General /v SuppressUppercaseConversion /t REG_DWORD /d 1
(as a single line).
Third Variant:
Change registry values by hand, open
regedit
and navigate to
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\12.0\General
then, create (right click):
DWORD value
with the content of
SuppressUppercaseConversion
and set it to
1
Close regedit.exe and you're done.
Fourth Variant: At least one VS Extension (VSCommands for Visual Studio 2013) has been published that enables you (among other things) to switch menu style via config menu from within VS 2013.
You may also set it to all-lower-case items (which is, imho, nice):
switch to Sentence Case (subtly different from what you get with SuppressUppercaseConversion: the SQL menu gets renamed to Sql)
or hide it completely (and have it appear on ALT key press or mouse over)
Best Answer
LATEST UPDATE (Nov-21): We have now released a patch for this bug. You can download it from here.
I'm leaving the rest of this answer as is but there should no longer be a need for any workaround once the patch linked to above has been applied.
ORIGINAL ANSWER: I'll start by apologizing and confirming we've got at least one bug here (if not more). There are several of us actively investigating this on our side. We don't yet know the full extent of the problem though so it would be great to get some additional information from anyone who's currently running into this.
The intent was to show a notification to users working on Windows or Windows Phone Store apps. It was not something that should be coming up for users not doing Store development.
The most promising workaround so far is to:
You shouldn't see the notification again in subsequent VS sessions until you do something that causes the Store related functionality to load again (e.g., create or load a Store app project).
If this doesn't make it go away, please respond and we'll try to work with you to get more details on what could be causing it to continue to appear for you.
UPDATE: If the above workaround doesn't work for you (e.g., ReSharper users), I've got another one that should at least provide a respite from the notifications for about a month at a time:
%LocalAppData%\Microsoft\VisualStudio\12.0\Notifications
directory.Notifications_Active.xml
file found in in a text editor.Severity
element to0
instead of2
.This should make the red alert no longer kick in for this notification as long as you leave the notification active (i.e., do not dismiss it).