SQL Server Management Studio Reset Settings

If you have totally messed up your user settings in SSMS. You’ll find it’s not as easy as deleting your user settings file:

C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\SQL Server Management Studio

After deleting SSMS will restore the previous settings from somewhere in the application. The best way to reset them totally is to run reset setting from a command prompt. First find ssms.exe mine was in:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio 18\Common7\IDE

Then run:

.\ssms.exe /resetsettings

That’s it SSMS will boot up with a fresh user settings file.