Visual Studio Intellisense stops working when creating new files - FIX How to fix Visual Studio Intellisense errors when creating a new file

Visual Studio 2017 - Lost Razor Intellisense and Syntax Highlight - How to Fix it

If you've stumbled upon this post it most likely means that you're struggling with a strange issue with Visual Studio Intellisense: it seems to work fine for existing files, but it show non-existing "errors" (in the Error Window and through the "red wavy underlines" inside the file) when you either create a new source code file or copy/paste an existing one.

These errors are usually related to "missing" classes or namespaces, that do actually exist (and often even compile properly).

Luckily enough, there are a couple workaround that can hopefully fix this nasty issue.

Fix #1: Delete the /.vs/ folder

The first thing to try when this issue hits your project is to entirely remove the /.vs/ folder, which is the directory where Visual Studio stores some user-related configuration files and temporary data: deleting that folder is safe, since VS will automatically recreate it when it opens the solution (if it doesn't exist).

Here are the required steps to do:

  • Close Visual Studio
  • Delete the /.vs/ folder (which can be found in the solution's root folder).
  • Re-open Visual Studio

It's worth noting that the /.vs/ root folder only exists since Visual Studio 2015: if you're using Visual Studio 2013 or below, you can achieve the same results by directly deleting the .suo solution file, which is placed in the solution's root folder as well.

Fix #2: Delete the /bin/ and /obj/ folders

If the above method doesn't fix your issue, you can try to do the same with the /bin/ and the /obj/ folders:

  • Close Visual Studio
  • Delete the /bin/ and /obj/ folders (which can be found in the solution's root folder).
  • Re-open Visual Studio

This workaround is often required when those folders contain some old DLL file (for example, when you change the Assembly Name of one or more projects): when this happens, the Build -> Clean command might be unable to automatically sort things out, since it will only clean up the known project files.

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About Ryan

IT Project Manager, Web Interface Architect and Lead Developer for many high-traffic web sites & services hosted in Italy and Europe. Since 2010 it's also a lead designer for many App and games for Android, iOS and Windows Phone mobile devices for a number of italian companies. Microsoft MVP for Development Technologies since 2018.

View all posts by Ryan

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