The OutputPath property is not set for this project

Question

When I try to compile my project from x86 debug mode in Visual Studio 2008. I am getting this error. When I looked at the property group of the project that complained, I see output path is set.

Here is the property group section for that .csproj file

<PropertyGroup Condition=" '$(Configuration)|$(Platform)' == 'Debug|x86' ">
  <DebugSymbols>true</DebugSymbols>
  <OutputPath>bin\x86\Debug\</OutputPath>
  <DefineConstants>DEBUG;TRACE</DefineConstants>
  <BaseAddress>285212672</BaseAddress>
  <FileAlignment>4096</FileAlignment>
  <DebugType>full</DebugType>
  <PlatformTarget>x86</PlatformTarget>
 <ErrorReport>prompt</ErrorReport>

Can any one shed the light on this?

NOTE: When I compiled this Debug and Any CPU it worked.

UPDATED: Error 1 The OutputPath property is not set for this project. Please check to make sure that you have specified a valid Configuration/Platform combination. Configuration='Debug' Platform='x86'

Ok and what configuration and platform do you use? Debug + x86 or something else? — Ondrej Tucny, Jan 31 '12 at 20:56
It looks correct. Is there another project in the solution that may cause the error? — Dmitry Shkuropatsky, Jan 31 '12 at 21:20
@DmitryShkuropatsky you are right it was another project that had issue. But VS complained about the project that is being compiled — Amzath, Jan 31 '12 at 21:27

Roman Gudkov · Answer 1 · 2020-03-06T10:07:14.770

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I had exact same error after adding a new configuration via ConfigurationManager in Visual Studio.

It turned out when the 'Production' configuration was added for the whole solution (and each project) the OutputPath element was not added to the .csproj files.

To fix, I went to the Build tab in project properties, changed OutputPath from \bin\Production\ to \bin\Production (deleted trailing \) and saved changes. This forced creation of the OutputPath element in the .csproj file and the project has built successfully.

Sounds like a glitch to me.

edited Mar 06 '20 at 10:07

answered Jul 29 '15 at 14:42

Roman Gudkov

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Nice catch on this mercurial error. Would never have guessed that a single slash could make that big of a difference. Have a Good Answer badge. – ouflak May 08 '17 at 07:45
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In my case, building a proj file, the difference between `any cpu`and `anycpu` was the issue, but your post helped me see that. – Joshua Drake May 09 '17 at 20:55
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Thank you Roman you saved my day...if only i could upvote your answer 100 times! :) – Martin Mar 03 '18 at 13:33
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Just encountered this in VS 2017 v15.6.6, bacon saved, thanks! – Angrist May 04 '18 at 11:42
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@Joshua Drake, this is an important issue when using VSTS. Visual studio online uses 'any cpu', while local visual studio uses 'anycpy'. Important for build scripts. – FrankyHollywood Jul 31 '18 at 07:51
This was exactly my issue. What a great answer! we should contact the MS devs on India about this! it screams "patch!". – hernanemartinez Feb 12 '19 at 19:33
It's incredible that this fixes the problem. Sometimes I wonder about the usability of VS beyond "Hello World!" apps! – Mmm Jun 20 '19 at 14:41
same issue.. strange. Seems like a glitch – Thameem Nov 15 '19 at 10:19
same with VS 2015, while trying cefsharp – charlotte May 28 '20 at 12:09
I had the same issue with VS2019 as of 17-May-2022. What I had to do was that I had to manually edit the affected project's csproj file and deleted the trailing \. Reloaded the solution and that worked. Nothing I did while in the VS IDE worked. – tobbiefox May 18 '22 at 00:09
The same problem and solution in VS 2022 (17.4.2) – Abedron Dec 16 '22 at 09:43

score 31 · Answer 2 · edited Oct 10 '14 at 12:24

31

If you are using WiX look at this (there is a bug) http://www.cnblogs.com/xixifusigao/archive/2012/03/20/2407651.html

Sometimes new build configurations get added to the .wixproj file further down the file, that is, separated from their sibling config definitions by other unrelated XML elements.

Simply edit the .wixproj file so that all the <PropertyGroup> sections that define your build configs are adjacent to one another. (To edit the .wixproj in VS2013 right click on project in Solution Explorer, Unload project, right-click again->Edit YourProject.wixproj. Reload after editing the file.)

edited Oct 10 '14 at 12:24

larsmoa

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answered Sep 22 '14 at 11:57

george

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thanks, this fixed it for me. I had a lot of weird behaviour the more configurations I added to the project. As soon as I cleaned up the project file everything worked fine. (This bug was first reported in 2012? great...) – Kirschi Apr 09 '15 at 13:06
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Thank you, this fixed it for me as well – PeterD Sep 05 '19 at 15:34

score 29 · Answer 3 · answered Jan 31 '12 at 22:01

You can see this error in VS 2008 if you have a project in your solution that references an assembly that cannot be found. This could happen if the assembly comes from another project that is not part of your solution but should be. In this case simply adding the correct project to the solution will solve it.

Check the References section of each project in your solution. If any of them has a reference with an red x next to it, then it you have found your problem. That assembly reference cannot be found by the solution.

The error message is a bit confusing but I've seen this many times.

In my case it was a "yellow warning" – AXMIM Jan 07 '16 at 15:59 — AXMIM, Jan 07 '16 at 15:59

score 22 · Answer 4 · answered Mar 09 '17 at 15:57

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This happened to me because I had moved the following line close to the beginning of the .csproj file:

  <Import Project="$(MSBuildToolsPath)\Microsoft.CSharp.targets"/>

It needs to be placed after the PropertyGroups that define your Configuration|Platform.

answered Mar 09 '17 at 15:57

Philip Atz

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I just exported a bunch of DLL/EXE using .NET Reflector and it generated the .CSPROJ wrong like you described. Wow never seen this one before. – Christopher Painter Jul 25 '21 at 04:41

score 15 · Answer 5 · answered Jul 22 '19 at 14:04

15

had this problem as output from Azure DevOps after setting to build the .csproj instead of the .sln in the Build Pipeline.

The solution for me: Edit .csproj of the affected project, then copy your whole

<PropertyGroup Condition=" '$(Configuration)|$(Platform)' == 'Release|AnyCpu' ">

Node, paste it, and then change the first line as followed:

    <PropertyGroup Condition=" '$(Configuration)|$(Platform)' == 'Release|any cpu' ">

The reason is, that in my case the error said

Please check to make sure that you have specified a valid combination of Configuration and Platform for this project.  Configuration='release'  Platform='any cpu'.

Why Azure wants to use "any cpu" instead of the default "AnyCpu" is a mystery for me, but this hack works.

answered Jul 22 '19 at 14:04

Jens Caasen

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By following your idea I found out that in my case I didn't needed to make changes in the project, but instead in my Visual Studio Build step in DevOps I set up Confguration field to use variable with the AnyCpu value. – donatasj87 Apr 14 '20 at 09:02
@donatasj87 would you mind posting the full value of this field please? – Jay Jun 02 '20 at 10:53
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Full value is exactly the same, this also should work in TFS build. It just needs to match the value that is set up in your .csproj file. You can see it in this picture: https://pasteboard.co/JbdvBT5.png – donatasj87 Jun 02 '20 at 11:47
You may also need to add a property group for ``Release|x86`` – Colm Bhandal Dec 06 '21 at 16:56

Amzath · Accepted Answer · 2012-01-31T23:17:43.790

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The error shown in visual studio for the project (Let's say A) does not have issues. When I looked at the output window for the build line by line for each project, I saw that it was complaining about another project (B) that had been referred as assembly in project A. Project B added into the solution. But it had not been referred in the project A as project reference instead as assembly reference from different location. That location contains the assembly which compiled for Platform AnyCpu. Then I removed the assembly reference from the project A and added project B as a reference. It started compiling. Not sure though how this fix worked.

edited Jan 31 '12 at 23:17

answered Jan 31 '12 at 21:27

Amzath

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Deffo try it with \p:Platform="AnyCPU" instead of \p:Platform="Any CPU". That worked form me! Was looking at this for ages! – Lee Englestone Oct 07 '13 at 11:02
AnyCPU (Without the space) also worked for me. Thanks Lee. – willem Oct 05 '16 at 05:23
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I encountered the error while running a build process on TFS 2017, after I changed the "Path to solution or packages.config" from a .sln to a .vbproj. Changing BuildPlatform to AnyCPU worked for me too. See the note under "Platform" here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/vsts/build-release/tasks/build/visual-studio-build – Mr.Zzyzzx Mar 01 '18 at 14:59
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In my case, when launching the build from TFS, `"any cpu"` was the default value for BuildPlatform. Changing to `"AnyCPU"` solved the problem. – XouDo Oct 14 '19 at 09:42
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This is 2020 - AnyCPU vs Any CPU is still a trouble maker. I'm using VS2019 and still get this on new projects. MS why are you punishing the developer community? – Christian Jul 16 '20 at 06:34
@XouDo how did you figure this out, and what's the difference between both? It solved my problem btw. – Zeeshan Apr 11 '21 at 14:44
@Zeeshan I checked many things in the TFS build and the csproj, since the error message is clearly related to `configuration` and `platform`. `AnyCPU` vs `any cpu` : the case is different, and there's an extra space in the middle. As for the reason why, maybe the default configuration name changed along versions of Visual Studio/TFS...? – XouDo Apr 17 '21 at 17:29

score 9 · Answer 7 · answered Jan 18 '13 at 03:46

I encountered the same error but the problem turned out to be because I had created a new configuration in my solution that didn't exist in referenced assemblies from another solution.

This can be resolved by opening the related solution and adding the new configuration to it as well.

This post gave me the idea to check the referenced assemblies after I'd already confirmed that all projects within my solution had the correct configuration:

http://gabrielmagana.com/2010/04/solution-to-the-outputpath-property-is-not-set-for-this-project/

score 5 · Answer 8 · answered Jun 13 '19 at 20:13

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If you get this error only when you try to compile your project from commandline using MSBuild (like in my case) then the solution is to passing the outputpath manually to MSBuild with an argument like /p:OutputPath=MyFolder.

answered Jun 13 '19 at 20:13

anion

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score 4 · Answer 9 · answered Oct 03 '13 at 09:48

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I had the same error, so I looked on project settings and there in "Build" section is "Build output path" option. And value was empty. So I filled in "bin\" value a error disappeared. It solved my problem.

answered Oct 03 '13 at 09:48

Lukas Dvorak

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Janis S. · Answer 10 · 2018-11-21T13:23:08.567

I have:

Right-click on project with issue -> Unload Project
Right-click on project and choose Edit *.csproj

Copy-paste the configuration from existing configuration which works with specific name and targeting platform (I had Release | x64):

<PropertyGroup Condition="'$(Configuration)|$(Platform)' == 'Release|x64'">
  <OutputPath>bin\x64\Release\</OutputPath>
  <DefineConstants>TRACE</DefineConstants>
  <Optimize>true</Optimize>
  <DebugType>pdbonly</DebugType>
  <PlatformTarget>x64</PlatformTarget>
  <ErrorReport>prompt</ErrorReport>
  <CodeAnalysisRuleSet>MinimumRecommendedRules.ruleset</CodeAnalysisRuleSet>
  <Prefer32Bit>true</Prefer32Bit>
</PropertyGroup>

Right-click project -> Reload Project
Rebuild project/solution

score 3 · Answer 11 · edited Sep 22 '15 at 16:21

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I had the same problem after I have added new configurations and deleted the "debug" and "release" configs. In my case I was using a cmd file to run the build and publish process, but the same error was thrown. The solution for me: In the csproj file the following:

<Configuration Condition=" '$(Configuration)' == '' ">Debug< /Configuration>

was setting the Configuration to "Debug" if I did not specify an explicit one. After changing the node value from "debug" to my custom configuration, it all worked smoothly. Hope this will also help whoever is reading this :)

edited Sep 22 '15 at 16:21

Liam

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answered Apr 15 '15 at 12:21

MihaiB

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Details for this solution are mentioned in this forum post. https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/vstudio/en-US/87b8aba4-9c61-4cfa-88f3-6236ee813582/msbuild-package-fails-with-outputpath-property-is-not-set-error?forum=msbuild – Sunny Tambi Feb 15 '18 at 13:12

score 2 · Answer 12 · answered Jun 13 '12 at 20:40

Another crazy possibility: If you follow a simple source control arrangement of putting Branch\Main, Main, and Release next to each other and you somehow end up adding an existing project from Main instead of Branch\Main (assuming your working solution is Branch\Main), you may see this error.

The solution is simple: reference the right project!

score 2 · Answer 13 · answered Aug 19 '13 at 14:28

I encountered this problem when adding a project to a solution then referencing it from yet another project in the same solution-- got the yellow warning icon over the reference, notice that path was empty.

The solution was similar to what @Amzath suggested, my projects were being compiled with different Target Frameworks, eg. .NET 4.0 vs 4.5.

score 2 · Answer 14 · answered Mar 20 '14 at 13:43

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In my case the built address of my app was set to another computer that was turned off so i turned it on and restart VS and problem solved.

answered Mar 20 '14 at 13:43

Jesus Manuel

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score 2 · Answer 15 · answered Feb 17 '15 at 22:26

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Another cause: you add a project reference from project A to project B in solution X. However, solution Y that already contains project A is now broken, until you also add project B to solution Y.

answered Feb 17 '15 at 22:26

David White

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score 2 · Answer 16 · answered Jan 26 '17 at 17:33

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I had the same problem, Just edit the .wixproj to have all of the <PropertyGroup Condition=" '$(Configuration)|$(Platform)' ... > elements to be side by side.

That solved my issue

answered Jan 26 '17 at 17:33

Sharon

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score 1 · Answer 17 · answered Oct 04 '17 at 01:39

The WiX project I was using was hard-set in the configuration manager for x64 across the board. When making the Custom Action project for the solution, it defaulted everything to x86 within the .csproj file. So I unloaded the project, edited it by changing all x86 to x64, saved, reloaded, and was good to go after that.

I don't understand why I had to do this. The configuration manager was set to build as x64, but just wouldn't get set in the csproj file :(

score 1 · Answer 18 · answered Dec 06 '21 at 17:18

For me, the error wasn't caused by an obscure issue as seems to have been the case for others e.g. this answer. In my case, the error message was pretty spot on at describing what was wrong. It was saying that I was attempting to build for a specific build configuration & target platform, but I didn't have that combination of configuration/platform defined in my project properties file. So I explored two options:

Modify the project file to support the given target platform, as per this answer
Modify the target platform of the build to one of the existing supported configurations as per the project properties

Both worked in the sense that both made the issue go away. But the second one was the correct one for me. The problem I had was as follows:

In VS, I had a target platform of x86 and there was a PropertyGroup for this in the project file, so this was all working fine.
But when I tried to build from the command line, using MSBuild.exe the default target platform was "any cpu", unless explicitly specified as a command line argument.

So the fix in my case, since I wanted to target x86, was to explicitly tell MSBuild on the command line to build for the x86 platform, as per this answer.

To quote that answer:

C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\MSBuild.exe my.sln /t:build /p:Configuration=Release;Platform=x86

Notice the important part:

;Platform=x86

score 0 · Answer 19 · answered Jul 27 '18 at 19:31

After trying all the other suggestions posted here, I discovered the solution for me was to remove the following section from the .csproj file:

  <ItemGroup>
    <Service Include="{808359B6-6B82-4DF5-91FF-3FCBEEBAD811}" />
  </ItemGroup>

Apparently this service from the original project (unavailable on local machine) was halting the entire build process, even though it wasn't essential for compilation.

score 0 · Answer 20 · answered Aug 30 '19 at 07:37

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I got this problem after adding a new platform to my project. In my case .csproj file was under Perforce source control and was read-only. I checked it out but VS didn't catch the change until I restarted it.

answered Aug 30 '19 at 07:37

Flot2011

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score 0 · Answer 21 · answered Feb 08 '20 at 14:00

I have had similar issue on a Xamarin Project. It is maybe rare case but in case anyone else is having the issue. my project structure was like below

xamarin.Android project had a reference from xamarin.android.library project.
I created a plugin using some code from android.library project.
Now here is the problem. if you add project reference or nuget installation on xamarin.android library project. You will get this error. Developers assume that code was inside Android.Library project and i must reference the new plugin on this project. NO!
you must add a reference on Main Android project. because plugin->library->main project output isnt produced.

score 0 · Answer 22 · answered Apr 23 '21 at 06:55

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Similar to Philip Atz, I had the following line at the top of my .csproj file.

<Import Project="$(MSBuildExtensionsPath)\Xamarin\iOS\Xamarin.iOS.CSharp.targets" />

Moving it further down solved this problem for me.

answered Apr 23 '21 at 06:55

mike peek

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The OutputPath property is not set for this project

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