The referenced project x does not exists

Question

Hej All, I upgraded my solutions of a project from vs2008 to vs2010.

But right now I have a weird problem. I reference a project in multiple solutions (3 solutions) In 2 of those solutions the referencing goes wrong.

I am able to add the reference (project reference) but when I build I got the warning the referenced project x does not exists. And errors that I have to add an reference.

I already deleted and added the project again, same with the references but no result.

Does anybody have any idea?

Greetz,

Jonathan

Answer 1

I had the a similar problem and the above solutions didn't help. What worked for me was opening the project file in a text editor. There were duplicate references to a library, one as a project reference and one as a dll reference. I deleted both. Then I opened the solution in Visual Studio, and re-added the reference as a project reference. Only one reference got added and I stopped getting the warning.

Answer 2

Make sure your project is not using the ".NET Framework 4 Client Profile" as target framework, this is the most common source of these problems.

You can check this in the project properties under Target Framework.

From MSDN:

If you are targeting the .NET Framework 4 Client Profile, you cannot reference an assembly that is not in the .NET Framework 4 Client Profile. Instead you must target the .NET Framework 4. For more information, see Troubleshooting .NET Framework Targeting Errors.

Answer 3

I had the same issue. What solved it for me was that i opened each of the reference projects on its own first. VS asks for a permission to fix some of the files. Allow it to do so.

Then open the top project and it will work.

Apparently it was issues with the version of VS that created the original project.

Good luck

Answer 4

Check the lengths of the following:

1. The path of the referencing project's directory
2. The relative path to the project it references

If those paths add up to exactly 259 characters, you will experience a bug in the .NET implementation of Path.GetFullPath that will cause VisualStudio 2010 to behave as if the referenced project does not exist.

Answer 5

I was experiencing the very same issue although I was correctly referencing .NET 3.5 in all the projects migrated from VS 2008 to VS 2010 (all references to System assemblies were using a runtime version v2.0).

Weird however, the error only occured if my solution (and the projects in this solution's subfolders) were located in certain path... I could "solve" the problem by moving the projects or renaming the projects (only the project file, not the output binaries) ?!

Double clicking the reference in the project opened correctly the Object Browser where I could find all the artifacts defined in the referenced project !

I did start to delete everything from the project (classes, resources, references, etc...). At the end, I had only two projects (A referencing B) without any other references and with only one empty class in each. I still had the message "referenced project '..\B\B.csproj' does not exist.". Suddenly, trying to copy the source to another PC and next back into the original path on my machine (kind of black magic to solve the problem), I did get the message "Cannot copy. Resulting file name is too long".

Wierd² !!! I did delete every thing on my PC and did copy back again the sources from the other PC. It passed successfully ! I did recopy again back from the other PC (overwriting now the existing local copy) and again I got the message "Cannot copy. Resulting file name is too long". So the problem occurred only when overwriting existing files.

I found that the error occurred only if the existing file was "readonly". Removing the flag readonly solved this issue. However, this error was the sign of something possibly at the root cause of my initial issue: "referenced project '..\B\B.csproj' does not exist."

So, I decided to check if the project path length was the issue by renaming one of the folder but not changing the total length! The error still occurred (reference not found). Next (I knwow, you already think I am crazy or stupid. But all those steps were validated by various colleagues), I did copy the solution in a new folder (with a longer path). Surprise, the error did not occurred anymore !!!

But moving the solution back to a folder with the same length (possibly another name) was reintroducing the error (after a "Clean" of the solution otherwise the meta in obj helped to solved the reference).

I was also able to reproduce this by renaming the project file B instead of a folder in the path. A longer or shorter project filename was solving this issue.

The length of the project filepath is "195" : D:\TFS_Builds\5\XXXX 1.1\Release 1.11\Sources\Release 1.11\Exception Repository\XXXXXX.Framework.ExceptionHandling.Repository.ServiceHost\XXXXXX.Framework.ExceptionHandling.Repository.ServiceHost

Also, as I can be very creative when trying to identify the root cause of a problem, I did create the very same path on C:\ and put the solution in there... Same error occurred.

I never found (until now) the reason of this and have posted a question on MSDN :http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en/msbuild/thread/f0eb6aed-5854-4678-9546-09c1a7705e30

Answer 6

Here is what fixed my problem: I had a refference to a project named "Utilities.Proxy3.5", which would give me a the following warning:

"The referenced project '..\..\Utilities.Proxy3.5\Utilities.Proxy3.5.csproj' does not exist."

Renaming the project folder and the project files to "Utilities.Proxy35" and re-adding the reference solved the problem. Note: I have only removed a dot between the numbers 3 and 5.

I hope this will help someone.