Error while loading project: Attribute Include is unrecognized

Question

After merging two branches the Visual Studio has suddenly problems with loading a project. When I try to reload, I always get the error

The attribute "Include" in element Reference is unrecognized.

I have no idea why this happened... how can I get the solution to load the project again? Has anyone encountered this error message before and know what I have to look for to find the problem?

The .csproj doesn't really look corrupt on the first sight...

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

I found the error... there was a merge conflict with a Reference-Tag with no close-tag because it was deleted while merging.

Answer 2

when you build the csproj file with MSBuild you get the line-number on which the error occurs. This is unfortunately not visible in VisualStudio.

• Open the Develop Commnand Prompt for Visual Studio
• Navigate to the folder which contains the csproj file
• Run MSBuild

In the error, it contains the line-number with the error in the csproj file. This helped me fixing the file after a GIT merge