How do you force Visual Studio to regenerate the designer files for aspx ascx files

Question

Sometimes when I m editing page or control the  designer files stop being updated with the new controls I m putting on the page   I m not sure what s causing this to happen  but I m wondering if there s any way of forcing Visual Studio to regenerate the  designer file   I m using Visual Studio 2008  EDIT  Sorry I should have noted I ve already tried    Closing  amp  re-opening all the files  amp  Visual Studio Making a change to a runat  server  control on the page Deleting  amp  re-adding the page directive

User · Answer

When you are in design view  right click on the screen and hit refresh

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For VS2015    here s a VB example for switching from a WebSite project to a Web Application Project that worked for me   None of the other solutions worked for me  which is why I m sharing this   It s not elegant  but works   Step 0  Replace all   CodeFile   with   CodeBehind   in your project Step 1  Close the Solution  Step 2  Run a home-grown Windows app with the following code  below steps   Step 3  Re-open the solution  Step 4  In Solution Explorer  make sure you are Showing All Files  and search for designer vb  or designer cs for C   Step 5  Select all the missing files  and include them in your project  Step 6  For each file  view the main page   control and save it       private void button1 Click object sender  EventArgs e                ProcessDirectory new DirectoryInfo textBox1 Text               private void ProcessDirectory DirectoryInfo directory                ProcessMask directory    ascx     vb            ProcessMask directory    aspx     vb             foreach  DirectoryInfo directoryInfo in directory GetDirectories                ProcessDirectory directoryInfo              private void ProcessMask DirectoryInfo directory  string maskStart  string maskEnd                FileStream fs          foreach  FileInfo file in directory GetFiles string Format    0  1    maskStart  maskEnd                          string designerFileName   file Name Replace string Format   0  1    maskStart  maskEnd   string Format   0  designer 1    maskStart  maskEnd                if  directory GetFiles designerFileName  Length    0                                using  fs   File Create Path Combine directory FullName  designerFileName                                          fs Close

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I often found that copy pasting caused this behaviour for me  Most cases can be solved by editing the ID of a server control  just add a character  then delete it    Also remember that control inside things like Repeaters aren t visible in the designer file   And yes  there are cases where you need to do the delete-the-file magic listed above - but the name-change solution will work most of the time

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I have had this issue before   I usually just hit enter to add a line and then wait for the plus minus to show on the html page and the designer should add what you need   I have also had to close the project and reopen it to get it to work

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The following comes from experience with VS2005    If you edit an ASPX page while debugging  then the codebehind doesn t get updated with the new classes  So  you have to stop debugging  trivially edit the ASPX page  like add a button or something   then click Design View  then delete the button  Then  your designer files should be updated   If you are having a different issue with VS2008  then I can t help

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This can also happen if you update the namespace and don t update the namespace in the designer file  Fix  Update the namespace in the designer file too

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I know I m late to the party  but I thought if after trying the accepted answer by  Glenn Slaven and the current highest rated answer by  Espo you are still out of luck  the following might save some people out there some trouble   User Controls   ascx  are what constantly stop auto-generating for me  I ve found that in the instances where I use other User Control s  in my User Control  it breaks the auto-generation     The solution I came up with was to use the trick we all know of for getting IntelliSense to work in User Controls or Skin files when using CSS classes from external sources   Instead of just referencing the CSS file  now I Register the other User Control s  that I need   It looks something like this    lt   If False Then   gt   lt    Register TagPrefix  uc  TagName  Title  Src    controls title ascx    gt   lt link rel  stylesheet  type  text css  href     css common css     gt   lt   End If   gt    After that  I Save the file  which prompts the auto-generation to regenerate  and I m back up and running

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Select-all in the designer file and delete everything in the file  leaving it blank and then save Select-all in the ASPX ASCX file and cut everything and then re-paste it back The designer file should have regenerated the code

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My experience is that if you want to do like in this article  like stated above   Your markup file  aspx ascx  has to include the CodeBehind  MyPage aspx cs  attribute or else it won  t work  I blogged about it here

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Apart from all the good answers already given  I d like to add to  johan-leino s great answer  In my case  for some arbitrary reason  the CodeBehind attribute was omitted from the  Page directive  aspx file  Likewise  it might be worthwhile to check the CodeFile attribute for  Control directives  ascx files  obviously in conjunction with an Inherits attribute in both cases    Depending on the exact scenario and reason required to  force  a regenerate of  designer cs  one could also try to format the document  potentially indicating a parsing error  before  quick  saving  regardless whether there were any changes or not  and check the Error List for warnings

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replace your custom tag with a invalid tag name  Save it restore the invalid tag name back to custom tag name  Save it  Then you will be prompted to checkout the   designer cs files or silently modify the designer cs  and produce correct variable of custom tag control

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If you open the  aspx file and switch between design view and html view and  back it will prompt VS to check the controls and add any that are missing to  the designer file   In VS2013-15 there is a Convert to Web Application command under the Project menu  Prior to VS2013 this option was available in the right-click context menu for as c p x files  When this is done you should see that you now have a   Designer cs file available and your controls within the Design HTML will be available for your control   PS  This should not be done in debug mode  as not everything is  recompiled  when debugging   Some people have also reported success by  making a backup copy of your  designer cs file and then  deleting the  designer cs file   Re-create an empty file with the same name   There are many comments to this answer that add tips on how best to re-create the designer cs file

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I use the following method which works everytime    Select all of the code-in-front  html markup etc  in the editor of the aspx ascx file  Cut  Save  Paste  Save    Recompile

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Step 1  Select all your aspx code  Cut   CTRL X   that code and Save  Step 2  Again paste the same code in the same page and save again   Now your  desinger page will refresh with all controls in  aspx page

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I ve found a way to solve this problem without changing any code or running commands like  Convert to Web Application  - and it s simple too   What I found was that restarting Visual Studio often solves the problem  but sometimes it doesn t  In those cases  if you close Visual Studio and then delete all content in the  obj  directory for the web project before you open it again  it has always worked for me    when started again you just add a space and remove it again and then hit save to have the designer file properly regenerated

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I know this is an old topic but I just wanted to add a solution that wasn t suggested yet   I had the same problem with a resource file  I edited it outside Visual Studio and the designer file hadn t updated properly   Renaming the file did the trick of regenerating the Designer file  I just renamed it to the initial name again and that worked just fine

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I ve encountered the same problem for years now  working in Visual Studio 2008   And I ve tried every  solution  on StackOverflow and dozens of blogs  just like I m sure all of you have   And sometimes they work  and sometimes they don t  just like I m sure all of you have encountered   And apparently it s still an issue in VS2010 and VS2012   So finally  a couple of months ago  I decided enough was enough  and over a few weeks I built a tool called  Redesigner  that generates  designer files   It s open-source under the BSD license  with the source code available on SourceForge     free to use  free to steal  free to do anything you please with   And it does what Visual Studio fails to do so often  which is generate  designer files quickly and reliably   It s a stand-alone command-line tool that parses  aspx and  ascx files  performs all the necessary reflection magic  and spits out correct  designer files   It does all the parsing and reflection itself to avoid relying on existing code  which we all know too well is broken   It s written in C  against  NET 3 5  but it makes pains to avoid using even System Web for anything other than type declarations  and it doesn t use or rely on Visual Studio at all   Redesigner can generate new  designer files  and it offers a --verbose option so that when things go wrong  you get far better error messages than  Exception of type System Exception was thrown    And there s a --verify option that can be used to tell you when your existing  designer files are broken     missing controls  bad property declarations  unreadable by Visual Studio  or otherwise just plain borked   We ve been using it at my workplace to get us out of jams for the better part of the last month now  and while Redesigner is still a beta  it s getting far enough along that it s worth sharing its existence with the public   I soon intend to create a Visual Studio plugin for it so you can simply right-click to verify or regenerate designer files the way you always wished you could   But in the interim  the command-line usage is pretty easy and will save you a lot of headaches   Anyway  go download a copy of Redesigner now and stop pulling out your hair   You won t always need it  but when you do  you ll be glad you have it   https   sourceforge net projects redesigner

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I had this problem and for me  I had a space in one of my ID values for one of my controls  I took the space out and the designer file regenerated itself

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Convert to Web Application did not work for me   Deleting designer cs and pasting a blank designer cs did not work either   But yes this worked    Select all Default aspx  Cut Save Default aspx Paste Save Default aspx   Done  New designer cs generated

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I had two problems    outdated AJAXControlkit - deleted the old dll  removed old controls from toolbox  downloaded new version  loaded toolbox  and dragged and dropped new controls on the page  see http   www experts-exchange com Programming Languages  NET Visual Studio  NET 2005 Q 24591597 html   Also had misspelling in my label control  had used  class  instead of  cssclass     Ta

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Just to add to the long list of answers here - I ve just run into this issue in VS2010  SP1  with an  aspx file  I tried adding and removing standard ASP controls  which has worked in the past  but in the end  I had to remove one of the runat server lines from an existing control  and save  to force the designer file to regenerate

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in solution explorer just right click and select convert to web application  It will generate all the designer files again

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I recently saw that I was having the same problem   Visual Studio 2010 was refusing to update the designer file   As it turns out  VS doesn t modify the designer file for a page that uses CodeFile  run off of pages  instead of CodeBehind  DLL    This is true no matter how many times you close VS  reload the project  re-create the control s   or modify a file   Nothing would prompt VS to regenerate the designer   It s as if it doesn t create the designer file for CodeFile pages but does require it to be there   I changed it to CodeBehind and saved the page   The designer file updated immediately   Then I just changed it back and everything was still golden   This behavior seems to be new with VS 2010    NET 4 0 as VS 2008 by default didn t suffer from this   It s this part    lt    Page Language  vb  AutoEventWireup  false  CodeFile  YourPage aspx vb  Inherits  YourPageClass    gt    Change CodeFile to CodeBehind  save  and then revert

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I thought I had this problem and was tearing my hair out  but then I realised that I was trying to reference a control from a static method    Making the method non-static resolved the issue for me

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I had the problem that my new controls would not generate in the designer file when declared in the  ascx file  The problem was that i declared them in the code behind also  So deleting the declaration in the code behind solved my problem

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In my case  it was fixed when I added a CodeBehind to the  Page section

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Delete the designer cs file and then right click on the  aspx file and choose  Convert To Web Application    If there is a problem with your control declarations  such as a tag not being well-formed  you will get an error message and you will need to correct the malformed tag before visual studio can successfully re-generate your designer file   In my case  at this point  I discovered that the problem was that I had declared a button control that that was not inside of a form tag with a runat  server  attribute

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Well I found a solution that works  though I don t really like it   I had to delete the  designer cs file then recreate an empty file with the same name  When I went back in and saved the aspx file again  the designer file was re-generated   Dodgy

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This is a bug in the IDE  I ve seen it since VS 2003  THe solution is simple though   Save your files  Completely exit the IDE  make sure the process stops  task mgr    Reopen the solution  dirty the markup  save  Fixed

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I ve had this problem a lot  and just did again  I tried fixing it using these suggestions  and nothing worked  I finally found that I had the  Title  attribute in the page header twice I added to the end  not realizing that VS added a blank Title    to the beginning -- removing the extra attribute caused VS2008 to re-generate the designer file    I hope VS2010 fixes this problem  letting us know why the designer file generation isn t happening     --  Derek

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Here is wat i experienced   Select the website folder right click in the Solution Explorer  select Convert to Web application for all the aspx file a designer file will get generated   Sameer

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Close designer cs  Change your aspx file to design view  Right-Click      Refresh  Save

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In my case I was just missing a register TagPrefix at the top   Somehow the previous dev worked without having this in there

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One of my solution  which works for me    Close the Visual Studio Remove hidden  vs directory Remove existing  sln file load the project in visual studio using  csproj file

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the only way I know is to delete the designer file  and do a convert to web app  However when you do this  it usually pops up with the error  as to why it didn t auto-regen in the first place  its usually a control ref that isn t declared in the head of the page

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Most of the solutions here don t work if you re running Visual Studio 2013 and possibly 2012  Microsoft probably introduced some optimizations to make the IDE snappier  consequently they ve reduced the number of cases that trigger the code generator  The following scenarios that used to work no longer do    Delete the aspx or ascx file -- No longer checks for this case Cut all the content and repaste into the aspx or ascx file -- No longer works  no change in the references Convert to Web Application -- Option no longer available Arbitrarily changing content on the aspx ascx file -- No longer works  see 2     The solution is surprisingly simple  but it s slightly cumbersome  In order to trigger the code generator  change something that would require the designer aspx cs to be generated  Changing content that doesn t affect code  such as a CSS style or adding text  won t trigger the code generator  You must change a referenced control  Here s how to do it   In the ascx or aspx change the ID of the control   lt asp HyperLink ID  MyLink  runat  server  NavigateUrl    Default aspx  Text  Home    gt    to    lt asp HyperLink ID  theLINK  runat  server  NavigateUrl    Default aspx  CssClass  tab  Text  Home    gt    Go to the ascx cs or aspx cs and make sure you rename all references to  MyLink  to  theLINK  as well  Save and do build and the you should be good to go

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Within the Visual Studio   1  Remove your aspx designer cs file  2  Right click on your aspx file and select  Convert to Web Application  This should add the aspx designer cs back and up to date   If you get an error saying    Generation of designer file failed  The method or operation is not implemented    Try close Visual Studio and then reopen your project and do step number two again  How to generate aspx designer cs in visual studio

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The solution the worked for me is   I just copied the page and and pasted it in the same portion  then renamed the first page what ever name  and renamed the copied page as the original page   Now the controls are accessible

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Another thing which worked was -     Manually delete  amp  then Create a designer file in filesystem     Edit Project file  Add code to include designer Eg   lt Compile Include   lt Path gt  FileName ascx designer cs  gt         lt DependentUpon gt FileName ascx lt  DependentUpon gt       lt  Compile gt  Reload Project Open as c p x file in design view mode  amp  save it  Check designer file  Code will be there

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TL DR  Edit the Inherits attribute of the ASPX page s  Page directive and hit Save  Your designer file should be regenerated   Ensure that Inherits    lt namespace gt   lt class name gt  and CodeBehind    lt class name gt  aspx cs    I was trying to do this on a Sharepoint 2010 project  using VS 2010 and TFS  and none of the solutions above worked for me  Primarily  the option   Convert to Web Application  is missing from the right-click menu of the  ASPX file when using TFS in VS 2010   This answer helped finally  My class looked like this   namespace MyProjects Finance Pages       public partial class FinanceSubmission   WebPartPage               protected void Page Load object sender  EventArgs e                                  more code           And my  Page directive was  line-breaks here for clarity     lt    Page Language  C   AutoEventWireup  true       CodeBehind  FinanceSubmission aspx cs      Inherits  MyProjects Finance Pages FinanceSubmission      MasterPageFile   masterurl default master    gt    I first changed the Inherits to MyProjects Finance Pages  hit Save  then changed it back to MyProjects Finance Pages FinanceSubmission and hit Save again  And wallah  The designer page was regenerated   Hope this helps someone using TFS

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I m in VS 2003 and none of these worked for me  What worked was to open the code at the top of the  vb page in the section labeled Web Form Designer Generated Code  the part that says not to edit there  and declare it there  where the system declared all the other controls  Bizzare

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There is another possibility  You may have an error in your  aspx file that does not allow Visual Studio to regenerate the designer   If you switch to Design View  it will show the control as unable to be rendered  Fixing the control  in my case it was an extra quote in the properties  and recompiling should regenerate the designer

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If you are using VS2013 or later   make sure that the code referenced with attribute  CodeBehind  not  CodeFile   then do below steps   lt    Control Language  C   AutoEventWireup  true  CodeBehind  yourControl ascx cs  Inherits  yourControl yourControl    gt     create empty designer page  or clear it if it s already exists  yourControl ascx designer cs   in the ascx  or aspx  copy all code   the delete it  then save  re-past it again   then save  the designer file should be populated now

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If you are like me and you add old  ASPX files to a more recent project  You are probably going to forget some of the controls used on the page   If so  first thing  if there are multiple files you are installing  Fix one at a time first   When you compile  fix errors generated  They will probably be the same errors in all the files   Next  if you have Designer files  delete all of the inserted - designer files  Next  make sure there are not any other errors when you compile  other than the designer files   Finally right click your web project and click on Convert to Web Application  This will insert the designer files you need   These are the absolute best steps to fix the issues

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In Visual Studio 2019 below are the steps   Create webform1 aspx Copy your aspx code and paste in webform1 aspx Compile your project you should have designer code inside webform1 aspx designer cs Now you can copy designer code and use in your original webform

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One thing that nobody s mentioned is to visit the page  I had my designer file stop regenerating because I was including a user control that didn t exist  for various reasons   and none of the things suggested here worked  For whatever reason  I didn t get any errors in Visual Studio - besides the one complaining about the fact that my client-side controls didn t exist because they weren t being regenerated  of course    It took actually visiting the page to get ASP Net to tell me the error

[asp.net] How do you force Visual Studio to regenerate the .designer files for aspx/ascx files?

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