These are some of the things we do to make Visual Studio behave the way we like for C++ development:

Menu > Tools > Options > Text Editor > C/C++

• General > Automatic brace completion = Off
• Tabs > Keep tabs
• Advanced > Brace completion > Complete multiline comments = Off
• Code style > Formatting > General > when I paste = Indent and format
• Code Style > Formatting > Indentation > Indent case labels = Off
• Code Style > Formatting > Spacing > Pointer/reference alignment = Leave unchanged

Tools > Options > Environment > Fonts & Colours > Display items > Merge – block selection box = Set both to white