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Troubleshoot project and item templates

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Applies to: Visual Studio

If a template fails to load in the development environment, there are several ways to locate the problem.

Validate the vstemplate file

If the vstemplate file in a template doesn't adhere to the Visual Studio template schema, the template may not appear in the dialog box where you create new projects.

Validating the vstemplate file

  1. Locate the .zip file that contains the template.

  2. Extract the .zip file.

  3. On the File menu in Visual Studio, select Open > File.

  4. Select the vstemplate file for the template, and select Open.

  5. Verify that the XML of the vstemplate file adheres to the template schema. For more information on the vstemplate schema, see the Template schema reference section.

    Note

    To get IntelliSense support while authoring the vstemplate file, add a xmlns attribute to the VSTemplate element, and assign it a value of http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/vstemplate/2005.

  6. Save and close the vstemplate file.

  7. Select the files included in your template, right-click, and select Send to > Compressed (zipped) folder. The files that you selected are compressed into a .zip file.

  8. Place the new .zip file in the same directory as the old .zip file.

  9. Delete the extracted template files and the old template .zip file.

Enable diagnostic logging

You can enable diagnostic logging for template discovery by following the steps in the Troubleshoot template discovery (extensibility) section.

References