I've recently been trying out DBForge SQL Complete Express and RedGate SQL Prompt. But after uninstalling them I had grey menu items left over in SQL Server Management Studio 2008. I went through the registry, the file system, and could not find anything left over:
So I was Google'ing around with terms like "grey ssms menu" and "remove grey ssms addin menu" and could not find anything about how to remove them that applied to my situation. (I wonder what exactly I was SUPPOSED to search for?)
To aid anyone else who comes across this kind of problem and can't find anything with those search terms (wink wink), the solution is:
- Go to Tools, Customize
- You'll notice the menu items become normal coloured, instead of grey (I missed this the first few times I tried)
- If you click and drag the menu items off the menu bar in the background (I missed that you could do this, too), they will disappear and be removed
This is probably obvious to anyone who has meticulously ordered Visual Studio or SSMS before, but as I've never done that, it wasn't to me.
As for why I uninstalled: I removed SQL Complete because the Express version doesn't support CTE's (which I use a lot), and I was removing an older version of SQL Prompt to try out a newer trial (although I'm also unhappy with that because it doesn't give you access to all the features of Pro: how can I evaluate if I'm happy with it or not if I can't even test out the proper features for a period of time?)
So it's back to SQL Pretty Printer and their web version for the time being (they don't do auto-complete, but at least it formats code almost exactly how I want).