The properties window will always be open based on the Current Active Solution Configuration ..
One manual workaround I could think of: In .vcxproj properties are set under the PropertyGroup xml tag. There will be one for Release .. You can copy the paste of the same ...
Example:
<PropertyGroup Condition="'$(Configuration)|$(Platform)'=='Debug|Win32'"> <LinkIncremental>false</LinkIncremental> <TargetName>MyCustomTargetName</TargetName> </PropertyGroup>
source share