CODEWITHSUNDEEP
visual-studiovisual-studio-2008
thepocketwade
thepocketwade

Reputation: 6606

Visual Studio Cannot Open File

I'm working on my first project in Visual Studio and I haven't used Windows much since '05, so please bear with me.

I've got my project open in Visual Studio 2008, and I'm trying to open a particular file for editing, but I get an error that says 

"c:\path\to\file
Cannot open file.

I've verified that the file exists, and I can open it from Windows Explorer, but nothing from inside Visual Studio, any ideas?

I'm not familiar with Visual Studio, so my terminology might be incorrect.

The file appears in the tree in the Visual Studio Explorer pane, so I double clicked it, and got the error. The error said nothing more than the file path: Cannot open file.

How can I check permissions/ACLs in Windows? I assumed that since I could open it in Windows Explorer, I would be able to open it in Visual Studio.

And it's a .cpp file.

Upvotes: 5

Views: 45071

Answers (4)

badradnan98
badradnan98

Reputation: 1

I had same problem, my project were build on (.Net 4.5), which I uninstalled on my PC and replaced by (.Net 4.8), so just replacing project's target framework to the one which is installed "in my case (.Net 4.8)" should fix it.

Upvotes: 0

ppetrov
ppetrov

Reputation: 3105

Additionnaly to the other answers, I found out that this problem may arrise if the target .Net framework version specified in the project file isn't installed.

This seems to prevent visual studio from opening all the files contained in the project, and showing the "Unable to open file " message.

Correcting the version (in the csproj file or in the settings), saving and reloading the project fixes the problem.

Upvotes: 0

James Black
James Black

Reputation: 41858

You may want to right-click on the file in the tree, and delete it from the project.

Then, add back an existing item.

Hopefully that will fix the problem.

Upvotes: 8

Jeff Wilcox
Jeff Wilcox

Reputation: 6385

Though I'm not familiar with this specifically, if you just want to move forward, I'd recommend creating a new project type and just adding all the existing files to it. Should be quicker and easier than diagnosing what could be many issues.

Other things to check: encoding type of the project file, permissions/ACLs (can you open that actual file from an unelevated VS prompt, for instance), etc.

Upvotes: 1

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