Cannot change visual studio code settings

These are the steps I used: 1. Ctrl-Shift-p to open the Command palette
2. Search for Settings and click Preferences: Open User Settings
3. In the left hand pane, click on the setting you want to change
4. Click on the pencil icon to the left of the setting. It will either give you the valid options from which to choose or it will let you copy the option to user settings.

5. The setting will appear in the right-hand pane.
   
6. Edit the setting as necessary on the right and Save

You need to make settings.json file and enter your settings overrides there. On windows that would be C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Code\User\settings.json, then add your settings, for example:

{
  "files.encoding": "ISO 8859-1",
  "editor.fontSize": 18,
  // ....other settings
}

You also have an option to add settings on project basis - just add settings file to .vscode\settings.json inside your project root folder.

The answers here are good examples of 'partial answers and also of 'insufficient answers'.

While each contains one or more facts that are members of the context information of the problem/solution space, each lacks any feature that would relieve the ambiguity of the problem space.

What is necessary is evidence that these facts can be utilized successfully. To wit: two columns do seem to open up, the left showing the json settings objects, the right showing the statement, "place your settings here to overwrite the default settings."

To perform this operation, you may need to right click your VS Code icon on your windows task-bar and choose properties/advanced and set the permanent option to 'run as administrator'

At that point, you can use the pencil icon to copy a 'default settings/value pair' to the right-hand list, which is the only editable list. If you do not migrate a setting/value pair to the right hand list by means of the pencil icon, or by manually entering the settings/value pair into the right hand list, then the pencil icon will appear to do nothing.

After migrating the setting, you will have to edit it to meet your needs. If you later discover that your self-defined settings are inappropriate, you should edit them from the right-hand list only, and then reload to save your edits.

If you try to use the pencil icon on the left hand list to enter an editing session for the values on the left hand list, you will be sorry, the pencil icon only serves one purpose: to migrate the default value to the right hand list.

So if you click the pencil icon, any custom values you have entered will be replaced by the default value. The pencil icon cannot be used to 'edit' a value in the right hand list, despite the 'edit' tool tip it displays on hover.

The only relationship the pencil has to 'editing' is to save you the trouble of manually entering a default settings/key value into the single object brace pair on the right hand side. (unless you consider its ability to whack your manual changes and replace them with the default values as 'editing')

That's how it works:

1. you must start by placing a settings/value from the left hand list of defaults into the single object brackets on the right by using the pencil icon, or by entering the settings/value pair by hand. If you choose to enter the values into right hand list by hand (per the 'placing' instructions), then do not use the pencil icon (unless you want to restore the default values).

2. You must use Ctrl-Shift-p, and select to reload the window in order to successfully save and apply your new settings.

3. If you do not like your new/changed settings AND you want to restore the defaults, click the pencil on the left for the settings/value pair you want to change. This will replace your settings/value pair on the right hand side with the default values (only) so save your original changes somewhere if you want to be able to get those back.

4. If you want to edit your changed settings to new changed settings, DO NOT use the pencil icon, but re-edit your settings in the right hand column. (and reload)

Oct 11, 2018: Hmm, I thought I explained this to a level of detail that was sufficient to address the level of confusion that VS Code designers had created by providing this backwards-mirror and insanely convoluted editing process.

I still think the details I provided are the fundamental understanding needed to 'feel your way' through this process, even though its been a year and the designers have added a number of features to this config-file-editor-for-martians.

Best idea I think is to skip the settings editor completely and just edit the user (global) setting in appdata/roaming, and the workspace editor (more specific) in the settings.json in the root of the workspace (folder for the humans among us) or each of the workspace roots (foldERS for us folks).