Why doesn't Visual Studio want me to add a new window to my WPF project?

Question

Maybe a stupid question, but when I add item to a WPF project, Visual Studio only offers me UserControl, and not Window. Is this trying to encourage me to do MVVM, is my setup broken, or is there some other reason I haven't thought of?

Answer 1

Add this to your first <PropertyGroup> element in your csproj:

<ProjectTypeGuids>{60dc8134-eba5-43b8-bcc9-bb4bc16c2548};{FAE04EC0-301F-11D3-BF4B-00C04F79EFBC}</ProjectTypeGuids> 

Here's an example:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <Project ToolsVersion="14.0" DefaultTargets="Build" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003">   <Import Project="$(MSBuildExtensionsPath)\$(MSBuildToolsVersion)\Microsoft.Common.props" Condition="Exists('$(MSBuildExtensionsPath)\$(MSBuildToolsVersion)\Microsoft.Common.props')" />   <PropertyGroup>     <Configuration Condition=" '$(Configuration)' == '' ">Debug</Configuration>     <Platform Condition=" '$(Platform)' == '' ">AnyCPU</Platform>     <ProjectGuid>{24793F93-0FD8-4EC9-B1D2-028DB489B10D}</ProjectGuid>     <OutputType>WinExe</OutputType>     <AppDesignerFolder>Properties</AppDesignerFolder>     <RootNamespace>nest_spawner</RootNamespace>     <AssemblyName>nest-spawner</AssemblyName>     <TargetFrameworkVersion>v4.5</TargetFrameworkVersion>     <FileAlignment>512</FileAlignment>   </PropertyGroup> 

Becomes:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <Project ToolsVersion="14.0" DefaultTargets="Build" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003">   <Import Project="$(MSBuildExtensionsPath)\$(MSBuildToolsVersion)\Microsoft.Common.props" Condition="Exists('$(MSBuildExtensionsPath)\$(MSBuildToolsVersion)\Microsoft.Common.props')" />   <PropertyGroup>     <Configuration Condition=" '$(Configuration)' == '' ">Debug</Configuration>     <Platform Condition=" '$(Platform)' == '' ">AnyCPU</Platform>     <ProjectGuid>{24793F93-0FD8-4EC9-B1D2-028DB489B10D}</ProjectGuid>     <OutputType>WinExe</OutputType>     <AppDesignerFolder>Properties</AppDesignerFolder>     <RootNamespace>nest_spawner</RootNamespace>     <AssemblyName>nest-spawner</AssemblyName>     <ProjectTypeGuids>{60dc8134-eba5-43b8-bcc9-bb4bc16c2548};{FAE04EC0-301F-11D3-BF4B-00C04F79EFBC}</ProjectTypeGuids>     <TargetFrameworkVersion>v4.5</TargetFrameworkVersion>     <FileAlignment>512</FileAlignment>   </PropertyGroup> 

Answer 2

Your project is probably configured as a WinForms project, or possibly as a class library. If it's created as either of these, you are only able to add a WPF UserControl, unfortunately.

Of course, there's no technical reason for this limitation, so you can copy/paste one from another project or recreate/change your project to be a WPF project.

I'm not sure what you change exactly to make it a WPF project in VS's eyes. You might try creating a new project and diffing it to your current project. You will most likely have to do some text editing on your .csproj file.