Visual Studio's Go To Definition is disabled and F12 doesn't work. Other commands like Alt-F12 may continue working.
Close the solution.
Delete the intellisense database file for the solution: [solution].ncb or [solution].suo
Reopen the solution.
Optional: Rebuild the solution.
Note that this can also be as a result of disabling database for C++/C#.
In Tools - Options, type "IntelliSense" into the search box, and click on C/C++ - Advanced. In the Browsing/Navigation section, change Disable Database to False, if it is not so already.
After re-enabling, close and reopen to force rebuild.
NOTE: IntelliSense will produce large files on disk (*.sdf and ipch) that should be excluded from Git, for example.
I know the solution has been resolved. However, I encountered the exact same problem. I searched internet. None of the trick works including this one.
Eventually, I figured out. I right clicked on the file that had the problem. I included the file in the project. Isn't that obvious. Actually not, the file has been included for a week. I have been working on that file more than 7 hours a day for the whole week. Up till yesterday 6:20 pm.
Oh, I could not compile correctly this morning. There were tons of syntax error message yesterday. This morning, I was able to compile. Strange. right? Then my go to definition was gone.
Took me a while to find out cs and designer.cs were certainly excluded, but aspx file was.
I solved the problem. Did my figure slip? I don't know.
That is one thing people check. Either yourself, someone else, or system accidentally exclude the cs files without the knowledge. I know it is strange, but it solved the problem. There are weird scenarios in Visual studio. People can present 200 solutions. They work for 99% of time, but not our cases. I just bring one more scenario
I encountered this in Visual Studio 2010.
For me, this solution did the trick
Close all the files.
Reopen the files.
and you are good to go.
This also happens, if Visual Studio has files opened, which are not in the current Solution.
I don't know how I got to this state, where files of a different solution where open as I didn't open them manually, but a quick check of the file path showed that those weren't files of the opened solution.
Therefore, "Go to Definition" was disabled.
I found that I had to remove my TFS mapping:
VS 2010 > open Team Explorer > Drill into the team project > double click source control > right click on the team project in the left pane and do "Remove Mapping" > after everything was removed I manually went to the local folder and deleted any lingering files > back in source control explorer I re-mapped to the same local folder and re-pulled all the code. Now the "go to definition" works again.
Not sure why I had to do this...
Check dll in references which is yellow. Remove it and add again.
I've just had this happen with a CMake-based C++ project in Visual Studio 2019. Everything was fine yesterday, then when I opened it up today all the Go To Definition/Declaration etc options were greyed out everywhere in every file in the project, even for things defined within the same file (and the syntax highlighting didn't look right either). It did work if I opened one of the .cpp files separately on its own (without loading the Project/Solution).
I tried various things including the answers here and telling it to generate the CMake cache again, but what finally fixed it was actually deleting the CMake cache. The Delete Cache option didn't seem to work (all the files were still there on disk, and there was some sort of failure message in the Output window) so I just deleted the entire "out" directory from the project directory (well, moved it somewhere outside of the project, just in case). Loaded up Visual Studio again, it rebuilt the cache again automatically and IntelliSense immediately started working again! I just had to wait 5 minutes for it to compile everything again when I wanted to run the project.
Maybe it wasn't necessary to remove the entire "out" directory, but when I clicked "Open in Explorer" under the "CMake Cache" menu it opened the actual build directory (which was the only thing in the "out" directory anyway) so I assumed the entire thing was related to the cache and was getting too fed up with it to try to narrow it down further. It's probably only certain files within that directory really.
Tried all the above solutions in my VS2019, nothing worked for me. Than I've noticed an update sign on the bottom Right corner. After updating the VS all options were restored.
Simple just check your bottom left corner of Visual Studio if Restricted turn it as a trusted and your problem will solve.
In my case due to my project is mapped with TFS so I am unable to go to definition also my project files showing read only when opening from Solution. So I have move to my root folder mapped with TFS and then right-clicked on folder > Go to properties > Attributes section was Read-Only I have unchecked it and clicked Apply. Reopen visual studio. Everything is now working fine.
I faced the same Issue in my Visual Studio 2019 version.I followed the below Steps:
Go to references folder in the solution.
Click on Manage Nuget packages.
Click on Browse.
Search for 'Microsoft.Net.Compilers'.
Click on Update.
This Worked for me.
In my case, another Visual Stuidio was opened (not closed succsessfully). Close all examples of VS, then re open solution.
Just open the Solution using Windows Explorer, instead of opening it from inside VS...
I've recently upgraded to VS2013 and I've noticed that it has the annoying habit of expanding every project node in Solution Explorer.
I can go through and close all of the nodes I'm not working on at the moment to declutter the display, but every time I open up the solution it re-clutters it by opening each project node again.
Anybody know any tricks to fix this?
Ok I see. It was a corrupt suo file. I just deleted it and all was well.
I have a web application project that I originally developed in VS 2008, and I am now developing it in VS 2010. For some reason, when I set breakpoints, they are not hit by the debugger; it just blows through all the code when I run the project.
I found a partial solution where someone suggested deleting the .suo file for the project after closing Visual Studio. This worked - ONCE. That is, after deleting the file, and reoppening the project, breakpoints I have set are hit by the debugger and paused there. The down side is that this only works once. After I stop the project and run it again, it once again skips all breakpoints. This is causing me to constantly close my project, delete the .suo file, and reopen the project again (which is obiously extremely annoying).
I have researched this, but I can't find someone that is having the same exact issue as me. I would greatly appreciate any suggestions on how I might get this working without this tedious process. Thank you!
I updated the Visual Studio Developer tools and voila! Some of my code no longer functions. I can debug, but 90% of the fixes I had made in the past day disapears whenever I debug. It worked earlier today with the old Visual Studio; but now, the effects of the code simply don't show up when I debug.
I can see the code in the code-editing window, but it doesn't debug any way I try. Does anybody know how I can fix this?
P.S. If this belongs on SuperUser, I'll be happy to put it there. Simply tell me, and I'll move it.
Manually clean the solution and output folders (by deleting the obj and bin folders while Studio is closed). Re-open and rebuild. If it's in a referenced DLL, drop the reference in the consumer, build to get a failure, then re-add.
We're using VS 2010 and GIT. Occasionally, after a git pull, all open files will close--seems like this happens when new files are added to the project. I can't seem to find a related file that shouldn't be in version control. Has anyone else had this issue?
I figured out a solution to this. It's a little annoying but it works around the tedious task of re-opening all of your tabs/files in VS.
When you get the VS warning that the Project has been modified outside of VS it asks if you want to reload the project. Choose "Ignore."
Next, save all your work, close VS and reopen your solution or project. All the files/tabs you had open previously will be open again and the updates to the project file, obviously, will also be loaded.
Another caveat to this is you lose all your "Undo" potential in your open files.
When a .vcproj file gets touched (not necessarily changed), all its opened files are closed and never reopened. Might this be what you are experiencing?
Check out
WorkspaceReloder.
It's a visual studio add in that will keep your files open upon reloading. It's tremendously useful and will keep you from having to go through those ridiculous steps. Productivity++.