Visual Studio 2013 C# Web Project builds but IDE reports The type or namespace name xxx could not be found error

Question

When opening an MVC4 C# web project in Visual Studio 2013, the IDE reports the error "The type or namespace name '_' could not be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference)", but the project builds and runs without any errors. Furthermore, intellisense does not include the project namespace.

The "missing" reference is to files within the same project. for example; the web project namespace is "webproject.com", and references in a controller files to "webproject.com.models" is underlined in red with the error above.

I have checked the following:

• All Solution projects are configured to use the same Target Framework(.Net 4)
• web.config in the Views folder contains the namespace in the system.web.webPages.razor section
• cleaned and rebuilt solution
• deleted all bin and obj content
• deleted .suo and .csproj.user files that were created by VS2010

The only way that I can get rid of these errors being reported in VS2013 is to unload then reload the project.

When opened in Visual Studio 2010 I do not get these problems.

Answer 1

I have the same issue.

ALthough the project compiles correctly, the code editor shows an error The type or namespace name '_' could not be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference).

THere is one workaround. Just delete the *.SUO files and re-open the solution. THen for this only Session it works. Unfortunately after closing and reopening the solution the issue is back again. VS 2012 works fine.

Seems to be a bug in VS 2013....

Answer 2

My solution, when I encountered the problem with VS 2013 Express edition was to simply unload the offending project and reload. Opening the SUO or Project file and making changes had not affect.

Answer 3

Try to unload the project in VS2013, then right click the node and select edit "projectname.csproj". Check the individual references they might point to somewhere strange.

EDIT: the csproj file is an xml file and the references are located under Project -> ItemGroup -> Reference