Troubleshooting program does not contain a static Main method when it clearly does

Question

My MS Visual C  program was compiling and running just fine  I close MS Visual C  to go off and do other things in life   I reopen it and  before doing anything else  go to  Publish  my program and get the following error message      Program C  myprogram exe does not contain a static  Main  method suitable for an entry point   Huh   Yes it does    and it was all working 15 min earlier   Sure  I can believe that I accidentally hit something or done something before I closed it up    but what   How do I troubleshoot this     My Program cs file looks like this   using System  using System Collections Generic  using System Linq  using System Windows Forms  using System Threading   namespace SimpleAIMLEditor       static class Program                STAThread          static void Main                         Application EnableVisualStyles                Application SetCompatibleTextRenderingDefault false                Application Run new mainSAEForm                            and there are some comments in there     There are no other errors   Help

User · Answer

I had this problem and its because I wasnt using the latest version of C# (C# 7.3 as of writing this) and I had to change the below internal access modifier to public.

internal class Program
 {
    public static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        //My Code
    }
  }

or ammend the .csproj to use the latest version of C# (this way meant I could still keep the above class as internal):

<PropertyGroup>
    <LangVersion>latest</LangVersion>
    <NoWin32Manifest>true</NoWin32Manifest>
</PropertyGroup>

User · Answer

That s odd  Does your program compile and run successfully and only fail on  Publish  or does it fail on every compile now   Also  have you perhaps changed the file s properties  Build Action to something other than Compile

User · Answer

I had this error and solved by this solution   -- gt  Right click on the project  -- gt  and select  Properties   -- gt  then set  Output Type  to  Class Library

User · Answer

That s odd  Does your program compile and run successfully and only fail on  Publish  or does it fail on every compile now   Also  have you perhaps changed the file s properties  Build Action to something other than Compile

User · Answer

I had this error and solved by this solution   -- gt  Right click on the project  -- gt  and select  Properties   -- gt  then set  Output Type  to  Class Library

User · Answer

That s odd  Does your program compile and run successfully and only fail on  Publish  or does it fail on every compile now   Also  have you perhaps changed the file s properties  Build Action to something other than Compile

User · Answer

My problem is that I accidentally set the arguments for Main  static void Main object value   thanks to my refactoring tool  Took couple mins to figure out but should help someone along the way

User · Answer

Are the properties on the file set to Compile

User · Answer

Check your project s properties  On the  Application  tab  select your Program class as the Startup object

User · Answer

For me same error occurred because I renamed the namespace of the Program class   The  Startup object  field in  Application  tab of the project still referenced the old namespace  Selecting new startup object solved the problem and also removed the obsolete entry from that list  You may also want to update  Default namespace  field in the same  Application  tab

User · Answer

In my case  where none of the proposed solutions fit   the problem was I used async await where the signature for main method looked this way   static async void Main string   args    I simply removed async so the main method looked this way   static void Main string   args    I also removed all instances of await and used  Result for async calls  so my console application could compile happily

User · Answer

What I found is that the Program cs file was not part of the solution   I did an add existing item and added the file  Program cs  back to the solution   This corrected the error  Error   1   Program        does not contain a static  Main  method suitable for an entry point

User · Answer

Check your project s properties  On the  Application  tab  select your Program class as the Startup object

User · Answer

It is important that the Main method is placed in the class that is properly configured in Visual Studio as a start-up object    Right-click your project in project explorer  choose  Properties     In the properties dialog  choose  Application  tab In the application tab  choose SimpleAIMLEditor Program from the drop-down for your start-up object   Now run your application again  The error will disappear

User · Answer

What worked for me  Close MS Visual Studio  then start Visual Studio and open the solution  The error message was then gone

User · Answer

I was struggle with this error just because one of my class library projects was set acceddentaly to be an console application  so make sure your class library projects is class library in Output type

User · Answer

I had this problem and its because I wasnt using the latest version of C# (C# 7.3 as of writing this) and I had to change the below internal access modifier to public.

internal class Program
 {
    public static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        //My Code
    }
  }

or ammend the .csproj to use the latest version of C# (this way meant I could still keep the above class as internal):

<PropertyGroup>
    <LangVersion>latest</LangVersion>
    <NoWin32Manifest>true</NoWin32Manifest>
</PropertyGroup>

User · Answer

What worked for me  Close MS Visual Studio  then start Visual Studio and open the solution  The error message was then gone

User · Answer

My problem is that I accidentally set the arguments for Main  static void Main object value   thanks to my refactoring tool  Took couple mins to figure out but should help someone along the way

User · Answer

That s odd  Does your program compile and run successfully and only fail on  Publish  or does it fail on every compile now   Also  have you perhaps changed the file s properties  Build Action to something other than Compile

User · Answer

In my case  where none of the proposed solutions fit   the problem was I used async await where the signature for main method looked this way   static async void Main string   args    I simply removed async so the main method looked this way   static void Main string   args    I also removed all instances of await and used  Result for async calls  so my console application could compile happily

User · Answer

What I found is that the Program cs file was not part of the solution   I did an add existing item and added the file  Program cs  back to the solution   This corrected the error  Error   1   Program        does not contain a static  Main  method suitable for an entry point

User · Answer

Oke  I was looking at this issue as well  And in my case the solutions was too easy  I added a new empty project to the solution  The newly added project is automatically set as a console application  But since the project added was a  empty  project  no Program cs existed in that new project   As expected   All I needed to do was change the output type of the project properties to Class library

User · Answer

Check your project s properties  On the  Application  tab  select your Program class as the Startup object

User · Answer

For me same error occurred because I renamed the namespace of the Program class   The  Startup object  field in  Application  tab of the project still referenced the old namespace  Selecting new startup object solved the problem and also removed the obsolete entry from that list  You may also want to update  Default namespace  field in the same  Application  tab

User · Answer

Are the properties on the file set to Compile

User · Answer

Are the properties on the file set to Compile

User · Answer

Check your project s properties  On the  Application  tab  select your Program class as the Startup object

User · Answer

I was struggle with this error just because one of my class library projects was set acceddentaly to be an console application  so make sure your class library projects is class library in Output type

User · Answer

Are the properties on the file set to Compile

User · Answer

It is important that the Main method is placed in the class that is properly configured in Visual Studio as a start-up object    Right-click your project in project explorer  choose  Properties     In the properties dialog  choose  Application  tab In the application tab  choose SimpleAIMLEditor Program from the drop-down for your start-up object   Now run your application again  The error will disappear

User · Answer

Oke  I was looking at this issue as well  And in my case the solutions was too easy  I added a new empty project to the solution  The newly added project is automatically set as a console application  But since the project added was a  empty  project  no Program cs existed in that new project   As expected   All I needed to do was change the output type of the project properties to Class library

User · Answer

If you have a WPF or Silverlight application  make sure that App xaml has  ApplicationDefinition  as the BuildAction on the File Properties

User · Answer

If you have a WPF or Silverlight application  make sure that App xaml has  ApplicationDefinition  as the BuildAction on the File Properties

[c#] Troubleshooting "program does not contain a static 'Main' method" when it clearly does...?

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