When I want to edit C# Unity scripts, they open in Visual Studio. It is supposed to provide auto complete for all Unity related code, but it doesn't work.
Here you can see the missing functionality:
As seen, the transform object does not open the autocomplete menu.
Unity version: 5.5.2f1
Visual studio 2015
Visual Studio Tools for Unity is installed
There is no auto-completion because the script says "Miscellaneous Files" instead of the of the name of the Project. Take a look at the image below that came from the video in your question:
The "Miscellaneous Files" message can happen for many reasons:
It can happen when you open your Unity C# file from another folder instead of opening it from Unity Editor.
This can also happen because Unity crashed while Visual Studio is still open therefore corrupting some files.
It can happen because Unity was closed then re-opened but is no longer connected to Visual Studio. When Visual Studio is opened you get "Miscellaneous Files" and no auto-completion.
This can happen when Visual Studio Tools for unity is not installed.
When you create a script from Unity then quickly open it before Unity finish processing it or before the round icon animation stuff finish animating.
Most of the times, restarting Unity and Visual Studio should fix this.
I can't tell which one is causing the problem but I will cover the most likely solution to fix this.
Fix Part 1:
Download and Install Visual Studio Tools for unity from this link. Do this while Unity and Visual Studio are both closed.
From Unity Editor, go to Edit → Preferences... → External Tools. On the External Script Editor drop down menu, change that to Visual Studio 2015.
Fix Part 2:
If newly created C# files are coming up as Miscellaneous then follow the instruction below:
From Visual Studio, go to Tools → Options... → Tools for Unity → Miscellaneous. Under Show connectivity icon, set it to true then restart Visual Studio.
When you re-start, connection icon should now be available in Visual Studio. Click it then choose the Unity instance to connect to. The red 'x' icon should now turn into a brown checkmark icon. Now, when you create a new C# file in Unity, it should open without saying Miscellaneous.
Fix Part 3:
Still not fixed?
Re-import project then open C# Project.
Close Visual Studio.
From Unity, re-import project by going to Assets → Reimport All.
Now, open the project in Visual Studio by going to Assets → Open C# Project. This will reload the project and fix possible solution file problems.
Fix Part 4:
Still not fixed?
Fix each C# file individually.
Click on Show All Files icon.
Select the script that doesn't do auto-complete then right-click and select Include In Project.
Fix Part 5:
Not fixed yet?
Credit goes to chrisvarnz for this particular solution which seems to have worked for multiple people.
Close Visual Studio
Go your project directory and delete all the generated Visual Studio files.
These are the files extensions to delete:
.csproj
.user
.sln
Example:
Let's say that the name of your Project is called Target_Shoot, these are what the files to delete should look like:
Target_Shoot.csproj
Target_Shoot.Editor.csproj
Target_Shoot.Editor.csproj.user
Target_Shoot.Player.csproj
Target_Shoot.Player.csproj.user
Target_Shoot.sln
Do not delete anything else.
Double click on the script again from Unity which should generate new Visual Studio file then open Visual Studio. This may solve your problem.
Fix Part 6:
If not working, check if you are having this error:
The "GetReferenceNearestTargetFrameworkTask" task was not found
Install Nuget PackageManager from here.
Restart Visual Studio.
See this answer for more information.
Fix Part 7
Make sure all of the projects are loaded.
In Solution Explorer it should tell you # of # projects.
If all of the projects are not showing, right click on "Solution (# of # projects)" and click Load Projects.
Try this,
In Unity Editor Go to Menu, Click on Edit -> Preferences -> External Tools -> External Script Editor. Set it to Visual Studio (your installed version of VS).
Now in Menubar go to Edit -> Project Settings -> Player Settings -> Other Settings -> Under Configuration -> Check API Compatibility Level -> Change it to your installed .Net version. In my case I set it to .Net 4.x
Now if Visual Studio is running already go to Visual Studio, it will ask to reload project. Reload the project. Check if it works, if not close Visual Studio. Now Open cs file from Unity Editor, and now it should work.
I found another way to fix this issue in a more convenient manner:
Select the broken file in Solution Explorer.
Open its Properties.
Switch field "Build Action" from "Compile" to "None".
Then switch it back to "Compile".
This will kill the synchronization between Unity and Visual Studio somehow.
The next time Visual Studio will reload the project, it will prompt a warning.
Just click on "Discard".
If you have done all of the above and still isn't working , just try this:
Note: you should have updated VS.
Goto Unity > edit> preference >External tools> external script editor.
Somehow for me I had not selected "visual studio" for external script editor and it was not working. As soon as i selected this and doubled clicked on c# file from unity it started working.
I hope it helps you too.
Unload and reload the project, in Visual Studio:
right click your project in Solution Explorer
select Unload Project
select Reload Project
Fixed!
I found this solution to work the best (easiest), having run into the problem multiple times.
Source: https://alexdunn.org/2017/04/26/xamarin-tips-fixing-the-highlighting-drop-in-your-xamarin-android-projects/
This page helped me fix the issue.
Fix for Unity disconnected from Visual Studio
In the Unity Editor, select the Edit > Preferences menu.
Select the External Tools tab on the left.
For External Script Editor, Choose the Visual Studio version you have.
Click regenerate Files
You Done
Select project in Visual Studio
Click "Refresh" button
I hit the same issues today using Visual Studio 2017 15.4.5 with Unity 2017.
I was able to fix the issue by right clicking on the project in Visual Studio and changing the target framework from 3.5 to 4.5.
Hope this helps anyone else in a similar scenario.
Two Alternative Options:
Fix 1
#singleton pointed me in this direction. Instead of changing the target in Visual Studio you should change it in Unity since the project is auto-generated.
First delete the auto generated Visual Studio files:
.csproj
.user
.sln
Then from within Unity go to PlayerSettings and under 'Other Settings' change the 'Scripting Runtime Version' from Stable 3.5 to Experimental 4.6.
However, that didn't fix it for me.
Fix 2
I noticed all of the references to Unity related code was marked with a yellow warning. Check your error logs and see if this is the case. In particular see if you get the following error: getreferenceNearestTargetframeworkTask
If so try:
Start Visual Studio Installer again.
On the Build Tools 2017, click Modify,
Ensure that "Nuget targets and build tasks" are ticked. This should become ticked if you click on Universal Windows Platform development.
Update 2020 with Visual Studio Community 2019 and Unity 2019.3:
Open Visual Studio Installer as Administrator, select to modify your current installation and add "Game development for Unity"
If you add a new c# script in Unity now, and open it (automatically) with Visual Studio, it is not described as "Miscellaneous" at the top of the window but with "Assembly-CSharp", and the autocomplete works.
i found my solution by creating the .cs file from visual studio itself instead of unity editor
right click on project folder in solution explorer
add > new item
type "unity" on the search field on the top right
select "CSharp MonoBehaviour"
name your script on the bottom and click Add
In my case, correct .net version was not installed on my PC. I install the .net 3.5 on my pc and that worked for me.
For Windows or macOS:
Download/Install the Visual Studio IDE (with Unity Tools)
When installing, make sure you include installation of
Game development with Unity
Then using Unity (you can double click one of your C# files), open a new C# project and the Visual Studio IDE should open with your new project structure.
From there, you should be able to see what you are looking for.
For example:
For Linux (suggestion):
Try Monodevelop - Additional Information, it provides code completion/hints.
My autocomplete also didn't work because Visual Studio Tools for Unity wasn't installed. So, after you install that, delete the auto generated Visual Studio files. Others said that you open file again and the problem is solved but it's not.
The trick is: instead of normally double-clicking the file, you need to open the C# file from Unity by right click and then "Open C# Project".
The issue I faced was that the C# Project was targeting a different .NET Framework (4.7.2), whereas the Unity project had a different target (.NET 3.5).
I fixed this by changing the target in Unity as-
File -> Build Settings -> Player Settings -> Other Settings -> API
Compatibility Level : Set it to the .NET version you already have
installed (Check your .NET Version here). In my case, it was 4.x
After this, Visual Studio worked perfectly and autocorrect was fixed too.
Try pressing Ctrl + Alt + Space (which toggles between suggestion and standard completion modes)
For some odd reason, the "Game development with Unity" tool can become disabled in Visual Studio.
To fix this..
Open Visual Studio
Go to Extensions → "Manage Extensions" → Installed
Find "Visual Studio 2019 Tools for Unity"
If it is disabled, enable it
Restart VS
Credit to Yuli Levtov's answer on another Thread
The following works for me.
Go to Edit->Preferences->External Tools->External Script Editor Select Scripting Editor
I solved to install the same version of .NET on WIN that was configured in my Unity project. (Player Settings)
Go to Options on the Tools menu and then select Documents in the Environment node. (If Documents does not appear in the list, select Show all settings in the Options dialog box.)
Put a tick on "Miscellaneous files in Solution Explorer" and Click OK. (This option displays the "Miscellaneous Files" node in Solution Explorer. Miscellaneous files are files that are not associated with a project or solution but can appear in Solution Explorer for your convenience if you tick this option.)
Locate your file in the Solution Explorer under "Miscellaneous Files". Then drag and drop your file to where it should belong and voila! This will copy the file to where you drop it. You may now safely delete the older file under Miscellaneous Files folder if you wish to do so
Credits: https://stackoverflow.com/a/47662523/10471480
In case Scripts folder is not visible:
Click on "Show all files" in Solution Explorer
Locate the Scripts folder.
Right Click on Scripts and select "Include in Project"
Keep in mind that if you are using the ReSharper tool, it will override the IntelliSense and show it's own. To change that, on VS, go to Extensions -> ReSharper -> Options -> IntelliSense -> General then choose Visual Studio and not ReSharper.
Before restarting and/or re-installing VS, First try opening any other of your projects to see if Intellisence works, if it does, then issue probably lies with your current project. First, most probable victim would be the NUGET packages with pending updates. To Fix this,
Right click on references
Proceed to Manage NUGET Packages Under NUGET Packages
proceed to updates Install Updates and recheck Intellisence
I tried all of these but ended up finding out that I needed to right-click the solution in Solution Explorer and add existing items and find the C# assembly file in Window's Explorer. There seem to be a bazillion different problems that give you this error, this is likely the most simple solution. If you double click on your script from unity, it does not seem to drag the assembly along.
Another possible fix:
In the project window, click on the Assets folder
Right click, and Create -> C# Script
Double click that, and wait.
For some reason, this work.
None of the above solutions worked for me. However I opened the ProjectName.CSPROJ file and manually added the new file and it worked like charm
What worked me is that I copied all the code inside the broken class and removed that file.
Then, I opened an empty file with the same name and pasted back.
Result: beautiful syntax highlights came back!
"Preferences" -> "External tools" -> set you exteranl tool
Thats one fix. Also for VS you can use ReSharper by JetBrains, but I recommend use Rider. That one is also free for students.
It provides less performance than visual studio, but more than VS+Resharper definitely.
Have a good day, mate)
Try with combination: Ctrl + Alt + Space
one of the above methods are worked for me and I just found a solution to this problem,
1. First, go to the project directory and delete .sln file
2. Second, go to unity and double click your script. Then Visual Studio will be open with an error,
Then click ok and close Visual Studio editor.
Finally, turn off your Windows Defender and then go to your project directory and there will be .csproj file. Just double click and open this from your Visual Studio editor and open the scripts folder inside the assets folder and open the scripts and autocompletion will be working perfectly fine.
These actions solved the problem for my projects in Visual Studio 2022
FIX 1
Solution
Assembly-CSharp (right-click)
Load Entire Dependency Tree
FIX 2
Solution
Assembly-CSharp
References
Double click on any lib to force loading
My toolbox is empty.
Obviously, I'm not the first. I read this question and this other question, but that didn't help.
I click here...
I get this window...
With instructions that say: "...Drag an item onto this text, to add it to the toolbox..."
Sounds good; from where do I get such items to drag?
The toolbox is empty because there is no project loaded.
The toolbox is populated with tools/controls according to the type of the current project. The controls are different for MFC than they are for ASP.NET, for example. If you haven't loaded any project, Visual Studio can't populate the toolbox.
Either open an existing project, or go to File -> New Project to create a new one.
Have you tried right-clicking on it and selecting the "Reset Toolbox" option? You can also try to manually add specific tools to it by using the "Choose Items..." option.
A common suggest is also to go into the Visual Studio 2010 Directory and delete all of the .tbd files within the following directory (Related) :
C:\Documents and Settings\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0"
Although if neither of these options work, you will really want to consider possibly reinstalling / repairing Visual Studio.
Is your project running? I noticed that my toolbox is empty when I am debugging the project. Try stopping debugging.
I keep getting a very annoying problem in Visual Studio. When I try to delete some text by pressing backspace it doesn't work. Why is this? What is going on? Sometimes I have to close and open Visual Studio to make this problem go away but I just tried that right now and it didn't work. Backspace works in Notepad in case you are wondering.
In Visual Studio go to:
Tools
Options
Environment
Keyboard
Find "Edit.DeleteBackwards" command.
In "Use new shortcut in:" dropdown select "Text Editor".
In "Press shortcut keys:" click backspace so it would show "Bkspce"
Click "OK".
Backspace should start working for you again.
This seems to happen to me when I open a solution and there are files already open. I used to close the files, then close and re-open the solution to fix it, but now I just hit Alt + Enter.
Here is the blog where I found this trick.
I solved this issue resetting keyboard mapping scheme.
Tools -> Options -> Environment -> Keyboard -> Reset.
A quick fix for me is to simply open any menu from the menu bar. Once the menu is closed the non-character keys start to work again.
Except for the above methods.
You should also check the shortcut key settings:
File -> Preferences -> Keyboard Shortcuts -> 'Then check the item: deleteLeft'.
I get this from time to time in VS2010 as well and simply just using the mouse to change tabs/files seems to always fix it now. Nothing more.
This method is working at 100%.
Go to "File-> Preferences -> Keyboard Shortcuts" and search for deleteLeft and add keybinding "Backspace".
Odd that this is still an issue even in VS 2019. Both the backspace and delete keys didn't work. Quick fix, I just ran the project and it seemed to give it the kick it needed.
All I did was exit visual studio and restart it.None of the above options worked for me.
In my case the problem was the "When" Condition in "File-> Preferences -> Keyboard Shortcuts".
I removed "textInputFocus && !editorReadonly" and it works now as expected.
I'm looking forward to the side effects ;).
Try resetting your Visual Studio Settings
Go to :
All Program > Visual Studio 20xx > Visual Studio Tools
Run Developer Command Prompt for VS20xx as Administrator and this command:
devenv.exe /resetsettings
A quick work-around for me is locking the pc (Windows+L) and logging in again.
You can reset keyboard mapping scheme like this
Options => Environment => Keyboard then select (Default) in the comboBox and click Reset button and then Ok button to confirm
Visual studio 2019 : Keyboard mapping sheme
Tested in Visual Studio 2019
This problem happened for me when I used a different version of resharper at home and then took that project to my employment. Backspace works for me now after I deleted the bin and obj and resharper directories.
I have this problem after I install Vim, uninstall Vim Backspace works fine.
When this issue has happened to me, I've found that hitting delete or backspace is unresponsive only within a portion of my code. This portion happened to be some code that I've pasted in from the internet somewhere.
To fix this issue, I cut out the recently pasted problematic code and then pasted it into a text editor like Notepad++. Then copying and pasting that same code out of the text editor and back into Visual Studio fixed the problem.
Using Visual Studio Community 2019 (16.4.3)
I just searched this issue because I could click in my document, type, et cetera, but I could not use backspace, delete, ctrl+z, or the arrow keys.
Opening the "File" menu, I noticed the Save option referred to a different file. I checked that file and found that all of the keys that seemed not to work were actually editing that other file.
Switching between the file in half-focus and the file I intended to edit worked and, luckily, undo was able to fix the file I unknowingly butchered.
If you wound up here, check your "File" menu to make sure the correct file is referenced, since the fix is quick and easy to try.
Just had this exact issue (along with 'Enter', 'Ctrl+X', 'Ctrl+C', 'Ctrl+V', 'Ctrl+Z' keyboard mappings seemingly doing nothing) in the latest VS preview version below:
Microsoft Visual Studio Professional 2022 (64-bit) - Preview
Version 17.2.0 Preview 6.0
The fix for me was to move to another tab (I had multiple open) use the backspace key which worked fine, then move back to the original tab with which it wasn't working, save the file (as it had outstanding changes) and then I found backspace and all other shortcuts then worked!
I can only think that VS got in a locked (to keyboard mappings) state for that particular tab.
A few notes on this:
I knew it wasn't a keyboard issue as I was able to use those
keys/mappings fine in other apps.
I found closing and reopening VS didn't work.
Also resetting the keyboard mappings (through Options menu as others have described) didn't work.
I had multiple tabs open.
Resharper was disabled.
I just had this happen in one instance of Visual Studio 2022, caused by the debug settings editor window being open in another instance of Visual Studio 2022 in the background where I couldn't see it.
Closing that window resolved it.
I've had this issue for a long time. I'm not sure what causes it, but Alt + Enter works.
The extensions that I'm running include AnkhSVN, MySQL Tools, and Productivity Power Tools.
I just installed visual studio 2010 on my win7 32 bit computer and i get the following message when I start it:
"the application data folder for visual studio cannot be created"
I had this same version of visual studio on my xp sp3 computer and it worked fine.
I googled for various solutions but nothing worked.
I tried to run:
"%programfiles%\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe" /setup
and to edit the [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders] AppData entry (but it was already okay). I tried to run as administrator.
Is there any other fix to this problem?
ps: after I installed visaul studio there was no desktop shortcut, the start menu folder was empty until I added premmisions for myself (I'm already admin...) and after that the start menu shortcit had no icon and didn't work so I had to run visual studion from the installation folders devenv.exe.
It sounds like Visual Studio is having problems creating the following folder
%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio
Or one of the sub folders it creates for storing data (10.0 for example). I would first try accessing that directory location or it's parent and make sure that your account has the proper permissions to create folders in that location.
Go to your AppData folder (c:\Users\\AppData)
Right click, Security tab; click Advanced button.
If your username is not in the "Group or user names" list, click the Edit button and add it.
Give yourself full control.
Make sure your select "apply to all subfolders".
Restart Visual Studio.
Mine was the same issue but for VS 2013. On your C:\Users\xxx\AppData\Local, find my Microsoft folder and Right-Click, properties, uncheck ReadOnly and make sure your name is under Security with full access. Then right-click on installer and try repair (or fresh install).
I tried to right click and run VS2010 as administrator and it worked :D
I solved my problem by changing permissions to the roaming folder, not local.
%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\
I figured it out after reading this:
http://tutewall.com/application-data-folder-for-visual-studio-could-not-be-created/
With Windows 10 x64, I solved this probem running the IDE as Administrator (right clic > Run as administrator)
if you have more than 1 vs versions installed, then simply change open with (or select vs 2015 or any stable version from upper open option) visual studio 2015
Then the solution is prepared and displayed.
Thanks.