Publish button missing in Visual Studio

Question

I have an ASP.NET C# WebApi project in Visual Studio which I develop for some years now.

Suddenly, the Publish button is missing from the Build menu, so I cannot publish the changes I made.

I already uninstalled and installed again Visual Studio (with different options selected), updated to the last version, reset all settings in Tools > Import and Export Settings and applied General and Web development settings, nothing works.

I tried to install in another computer, and it is there. Tried to export the settings and import in the computer I need to use, and does not work.

Everything apart of this is working.

Do you have any clue what is causing this?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

I had the exact same problem. In my case it was self inflicted.

My project file (.csproj) was missing the <ProjectTypeGuids> setting. When I copied one over from another similar project (that had the publish option) the issue was resolved and I could once again Publish from the context menu.

I seem to remember removing the <ProjectTypeGuids> entry to get over another Visual Studio issue that I was experiencing at the time :(