“This project requires a Visual Studio update to load” error when creating a Xamarin.Forms Cross-Platform Application

Question

When I create a Xamarin.Forms application using Visual Studio Community 2015 Community on Windows 8.1 it shows me this error on load:

A problem was encountered creating the sub project 'App1.WinPhone'. This project requires a Visual Studio update to load. Right-click on the project and choose 'Download Update'

I've installed all updates available and trying on a newly installed Windows.

Note: I had this error in Forms.

How can I fix this error?

Note: There isn't a Download Update option in Solution Explorer.

Answer 1

Navigate to where you saved the project files that you created in Visual Studio. Default location is C:\Users\PSDan\Documents\Visual Studio 2015\Projects.

Open the project folder that you are experiencing problems with and navigate to C:\Users\PSDan\Documents\Visual Studio 2015\Projects\test\test\test.Windows folder. Inside this folder is a file called test.Windows.csproj.

Right click on that file and open with... using Visual Studio, by doing this it should detect the missing package and in my case automatically prompted to install the missing package.

Answer 2

I've been seeing similar errors for .Window or .WindowPhone and what I've observed is that it is due to missing SDK. Same might be the case with you.

Do you see App1.Droid appearing in the solution? (I guess NO)

Go to file explorer and locate App1.Droid.csproj (..\App1\App1.Droid\App1.Droid.csproj) and open this in a new instance. There it will pop up "Install Missing Feature" dialog and you can follow the steps to install missing components.