Related
I have installed Visual Studio Community 2015 (DreamSpark program) on my Windows 10 N 64 bit machine.
But when I want to create a new web project, I can't see anything related to this.
So I launched the setup and watched if the "Web development tools" was checked or not and it was.
I unchecked it, then clicked next so VS Setup uninstalled these tools.
Then I re-launched the setup and checked it to install the "Web development tools" but it does not solve my problem.
I tried uninstalling, clearing all caches, install VS 2015 with another ISO re-downloaded in case that a file was corrupted or whatever, but I still have got this issue.
I tried to install manually Web Application templates using devenv /installVSTemplates -> does not work neither.
I tried to follow this article : http://blogs.msdn.com/b/heaths/archive/2015/07/17/removing-visual-studio-components-left-behind-after-an-uninstall.aspx
in order to remove all components related to VS left after a classic uninstallation but the setup encounters a fatal error..
I really need to work for my studies and I don't know what to do to make it work. I tried everything I've found on the web, tried to clean with CCleaner + manually delete cache folder ect..
But I still can't create a new web project because it just does not appear.
In Nugget Package Manager (inside VS), I can see that the ASP.NET package is installed (forgot the exact name but, this is the package related to what I am looking for) and I can't uninstall it to try a re-installation.
I'm trying to solve my probleme since 2 weeks ago but I still have got this issue.
Sorry for english mistakes.
Best regards,
Just to double check
Go to control panel "Add / remove programs" -> "Visual 2015" -> "Modify" , check that "Web developer tools" checked.
After reinstalling everything should reappear.
If you have already done this try..
(1) Please make sure that it is the latest windows 10 run windows update
(2) Run the command line:
Please check this folder in your system:
/Common7/IDE
You will find projecttemplate and itemtemplate, and you will also find projecttemplatecache and itemtemplatecache which are related to this templates issue, maybe you could remove them, and then run the following commands and see whether it can help you create the item/project templates.
devenv /installvstemplates.
devenv /ResetSettings.
Hopefully this fixes the issues
You can download this tutorial at http://blogs.msdn.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-01-44-28-Documents/8420.Quick_5F00_Start_5F00_Azure_5F00_Webapp.pdf
Please also make sure that you are trying to add this item under a directory which can hold this type of file.
Go to Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\Common7\IDE. Rename ProjectTemplatesCache folder and restart Visual Studio
I'm working on a large-ish web forms application and VS has stopped updating .aspx.designer.cs files in the last few days.
It seemed like the designer updates initially became flaky (sometimes update, sometimes not) then stopped updating altogether. Now I have to manually edit the designer file after adding a control to a page before I can compile.
I've searched and tried all the suggestions like switching from markup to design view and back etc - no change. The only thing that kind of works is this but even then the generated designer file often doesn't contain references to all the controls on the page. And also that only works on a per-file basis. Ideally I would like the whole project to update/generate designer files correctly again.
I've tried cleaning the solution - no change.
VS details:
Microsoft Visual Studio Professional 2013
Version 12.0.40629.00 Update 5
Microsoft .NET Framework Version 4.6.00079
Installed Version: Professional
Any suggestions appreciated - thanks.
Make sure you're not running the application/site while adding controls. I've noticed that VS will lock the designer files while in debug mode and doesn't sync up when you exit debug mode.
Also, your link is broken, doesn't point to anything so I can't see what you were referencing to.
I think what caused this was a somewhat flaky local install of the project from TFS. It compiled but still had red squiggly lines under a few namespaces at design time. Once the project references were all clean the designer files were also updating correctly.
I have a Web Application project in VS 2012 and when I use the web publishing tool it builds successfully but doesn't copy any files to the publish target (File System in this case).
If I look at the build output I can see everything gets copied over to obj\Release\Package\PackageTmp\ correctly but then all I see in the build output is this:
4>Done building project "{Project}.csproj".
4>Deleting existing files...
4>Publishing folder /...
4> ========== Build: 3 succeeded, 0 failed, 1 up-to-date, 0 skipped ==========
========== Publish: 1 succeeded, 0 failed, 0 skipped ==========
Even though it says the publish succeeded there are not files in the target directory for the publish.
I have seen this in multiple projects and sometimes it seems like the Solution/Platform configurations cause this problem but I haven't been able to pinpoint an exact cause for this.
Has anyone else seen this happening or have an idea on how to get this working correctly?
UPDATE:
I may have found a workaround for this. I just had this happen again and I was messing around with the publish settings. Once I changed the selected Configuration on the Settings tab away to another configuration and then back to the one I wanted to use all my files started publishing again. Hopefully this works on other projects in the future.
UPDATE 2:
I posted a bug on Microsoft Connect and heard back from a developer on the VS Web Developer team. He said they have fixed this issue in their internal builds and will releasing an update to the publish tool soon that will fix this problem.
UPDATE 3:
This has been recently fixed with Visual Studio 2012 Update 2
Same problem. The workaround was changing the publish settings from Release to Debug. Re-publish and then change back to Release...
This may be caused by solutions/projects that were created with the RC of vs2012. This happened to me months ago and fixed the problem by making sure my solution build configurations matched my project configurations...
I just recently experienced the same problem when opening the same solution originally created in vs2012RC with VS2012 Express for Web. I did exactly what the original poster suggested and it fixed my problem.
Here is the thread that lead me to the answer:
connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/746321/publish-web-application-fails
The pertinent response from the conversation above that helped me was:
Posted by Microsoft on 6/13/2012 at 12:00 PM Hi Andrew,
This was a bug in how we handle the solution configuration vs. the
project configuration. We incorrectly assumed that they would be the
same (e.g. Solution's Release|x86 would have each project set to
Release|x86 as well), which caused us to use the wrong build
properties for publishing files.
The workaround is to make the solution configuration and build
configuration match. This issue will be fixed in the next release of
Visual Studio 2012.
Thanks,
- Jimmy Lewis SDET, Visual Web Developer team
To take this a bit further. You have two files that are created when you create a publish profile.
NewProfile.pubxml
NewProfile.pubxml.user
When you open a project that has these files in the PublishProfile folder from a source control it only has the .pubxml file and not the .publxml.user file, so it creates the .publxml.user file on the fly when you open the project.
When it creates the new .publxml.user on the fly the xml looks like:
<Project ToolsVersion="4.0" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003">
</Project>
When you create a new profile it creates xml that looks like:
<Project ToolsVersion="4.0" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003">
<PropertyGroup>
<LastUsedBuildConfiguration>Release</LastUsedBuildConfiguration>
<LastUsedPlatform>Any CPU</LastUsedPlatform>
<TimeStampOfAssociatedLegacyPublishXmlFile />
<EncryptedPassword />
</PropertyGroup>
</Project>
If you take the <PropertyGroup> node and put it in the .pubxml.user file your PublishProfiles will start working again.
An easy fix is to delete your publish profile and create a fresh one.
when you right click on your solution and select publish, you have a profile set. delete this and create a new one.
this will fix it.
I had this problem from switching from 2010 to 2012
I had same error and I change the setting from release to debug and the problem resolved..
I had this same problem however none of the answers in this thread worked for me. My issue was that there is a directory that contains dynamically generated (by my app) static HTML files. The entire directory was not being published.
The solution that worked for me was found here:
One issue I got a while back and thought I should document was that certain file types were not being uploaded when I published my project.
The file types in question were .pdf files and .rtf.
The reason this happened was because these file extensions were not recognized as requiring publishing by Visual Studio. Luckily this can be changed in Visual Studio.
Select the file(s) that aren’t being copied. In Properties ensure that Build Action is set to Content.
If this doesn’t work the following can be tried.
Under the Project menu select Package/Publish Web and notice this drop down:
Try changing this to All files in this project folder.
This is because the .pubxml.user contains required information to publish, and that file isn't (and shouldn't) be included in source control. To fix this VS bug, copy the information from the .pubxml.user file to the .pubxml file. The relevant properties are:
<LastUsedBuildConfiguration>Release</LastUsedBuildConfiguration>
<LastUsedPlatform>Any CPU</LastUsedPlatform>
Put those in your .pubxml and you should be good to go.
I tried all of these solutions but this is the one that works every time.
We just change the "Publish method:" from "File System" to for example "Web Deploy", and immediately change it back to "File System".
I have (had) the same problem for several projects. The only ones hit seem to be web projects. Deleting and recreating the profile solves the problem only once. Additionaly, comparing the publishxml generated yields no differences, so it does not seem related to the profile at all.
The workaround mentioned by OP to change build problems back and forth seems the only reliable solution at this time.
I ran into the same problem on VS 2010, after checking publish output, event logs, turning on and checking visual studio logs etc I then decided to remove the web publish (via add/remove) which I believe had been recently updated to v1.0.30810.0. This resolved the problem.
Here we had the same problem.
We just change the "Publish method:" from "File System" to for example "Web Deploy", and immediately change it back to "File System".
The following worked for me:
Simply change from Release>Debug>Release (or vice-versa) and then publish.
No need for deleting, editing, publishing anything you don't need to.
My problem was in wrong configuration of myproject.csproj file. '_address-step1-stored.cshtml' file did not copy on publish. 'None' changed to 'Content', now it's ok.
Same problem with VS 2012 Pro with a disk publish target. Project used to publish correctly but started doing this issue where it failed to copy the files to the destination folder.
Solution was to edit the publish profile, change the mode from Release (Any CPU) to debug then back to Release (Any CPU). Doing this causes the PublishProfiles\projname.pubxml.user file to be rewritten (as described above). Looks like it added the LastUsedBuild,LastUsedPlatform and TimeStampOfAssociatedLegacyPublishXmlFile elements under the propertygroup node. After the publish is complete, it adds another ItemGroup with individual files and publish times.
For what it's worth, I eventually gave up on fighting with Web Deploy to get it to do what I wanted (copy deployable files and nothing else), so I scripted it in PowerShell and am really happy with the result. It's much faster than anything I tried through MSBuild/Web Publish, presumably because those methods were still doing things I didn't need.
Here's the gist (literally):
function copy-deployable-web-files($proj_path, $deploy_dir) {
# copy files where Build Action = "Content"
$proj_dir = split-path -parent $proj_path
[xml]$xml = get-content $proj_path
$xml.Project.ItemGroup | % { $_.Content } | % { $_.Include } | ? { $_ } | % {
$from = "$proj_dir\$_"
$to = split-path -parent "$deploy_dir\$_"
if (!(test-path $to)) { md $to }
cp $from $to
}
# copy everything in bin
cp "$proj_dir\bin" $deploy_dir -recurse
}
In my case I'm calling this in a CI environment (TeamCity), but it could easily be hooked into a post-build event as well.
This action was successful for me:
Kill Publish Profiles in "Properties>PublishProfiles>xxxx.pubxml" and re-setting again.
I found the I could get around this problem by changing the target location from obj/[release|stage|..] to a new path outside of the solution folders completely eg c:\deployment. It seems like VS 2012 was getting confused and maybe giving up somewhere during the publish process.
Matt
Had the same problem recently in VS 2013 for a MVC project in which I imported Umbraco CMS. I couldn't publish. The answer above helped, though I needed a while to figure out what I actually should do in VS. It needed some research e.g. on MS blogs to find out. I try to say it simple:
Choose in the VS toolbar a certain configuration e.g. Release and Any CPU. Run the project.
Afterwards right-click in the Solution Explorer on the solution in question, choose Publish. Create a new publishing profile or use a given one, but always make sure that in the settings the same configuration (e.g. Release and Any CPU) is chosen, as before you run the project the last time.
Additionally in my case it was necessary to delete the OBJ folder because here the settings from my last unsuccessful tries to publish got stuck, though I restarted VS and deleting all publishing profiles.
I have a Web Application with several other referenced Projects in the Solution. I've deployed successfully with a single Publish configuration many times in the past. I changed the Project Configuration from Debug to Release for a Project that had been missed in the past. The next time I attempted to deploy I got these symptoms, where the Publish just quietly fails - it does nothing and says it succeeded:
1>------ Build started: Project: Project, Configuration: DeployProduction Any CPU ------
1>
2>Publishing folder /...
========== Build: 1 succeeded, 0 failed, 9 up-to-date, 0 skipped ==========
========== Publish: 1 succeeded, 0 failed, 0 skipped ==========
The only way to recover it was to wipe out the Publish profile, close Visual Studio to force it to save the deletion, reopen it, and recreate the Publish profile from scratch. Once I did that I could Publish fine again.
Win8 VS2012, crappy laptop.
In Visual Studio 2012, switching between releases still causes problems.
We added a pre-build event to delete the obj folder: del /s /f /q $(ProjectDir)\obj and it fixed the issue of publishing. Cleaning works sometimes, but not always.
I finally found the answer by myself. All of the above solutions doesnt work for me.
What i had done is that i move the project to drive c change the project folder to something shorter and boom it publish..
the reason that it failed on my side is that i had very long project name/heirarchy.
C:\Users\user\Desktop\Compliance Management System\ComplianceIssueManagementSystem\ComplianceIssueManagementSystem
I had thought of this because sometimes when i extracted rar file it says that the name/path is too long. I thought it will be the same as visual studio 2012 publish. and it does!
hope it will help you guys.
Check your current project that whether you have made back copy with same class name and different page name (Class name will inherit copied file). Ultimately that will confuse the compiler!!!
CodeFile="Consolidated.aspx.vb" Inherits="Consolidated
None of the above solutions worked for me.
But I noticed that of our five ASP.NET MVC projects in our main solution, four of them put the deployment package in the right place, while one left it under obj\Debug.
I compared the projects and found a discrepancy. The solution was to change this:
<Import
Project="$(MSBuildExtensionsPath32)\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v10.0\WebApplications\Microsoft.WebApplication.targets" />
to this:
<Import
Project="$(VSToolsPath)\WebApplications\Microsoft.WebApplication.targets"
Condition="'$(VSToolsPath)' != ''" />
<Import
Project="$(MSBuildExtensionsPath32)\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v10.0\WebApplications\Microsoft.WebApplication.targets"
Condition="false" />
After I made this change, all five projects put their deployment packages in the right spot.
(Sorry about the long lines, but I couldn't find a better way to condense them.)
I encountered this with Visual Studio generated Service Reference files becoming too long in terms of the overall path length.
Shortened them by re-generating the Service Reference using svcutil.exe, deleting all the original Service Reference files.
svcutil can be called like this:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v8.0A\bin\NETFX 4.0 Tools\SvcUtil.exe" /language:CS http://myservice /namespace:*,My.Namespace
My.Namespace should be replaced with the existing namespace in the generated service proxy (typically found in the Reference.cs file) to avoid compilation errors.
http://myservice should be replaced with the service endpoint url.
I've got into same problem. None of the above solutions worked for me.
So, I've excluded the files which failed to copy while publishing.
I had published the website several times. But one day when I modified some aspx file and then tried to publish the website, it resulted in an empty published folder.
On my workaround, I found a solution.
The publishing wizard will reflect any error while publishing but will not copy any file to the destination folder.
To find out the file that generates the error just copy the website folder contents to a new folder and start the visual studio with that website.
Now when you try to publish it will give you the file name that contains errors.
Just rectify the error in the original website folder and try to publish, it will work as it was earlier.
Follow these steps to resolve:
Build > Publish > Profile > New
Create a new profile and configure it with the same settings as your existing profile.
The project will now publish correctly. This often occurs as a result of a source-controlled publish profile from another machine that was created in a newer version of Visual Studio.
FIXED - various solutions offered didn't work for me. What did work for me with VS Community 2017, Windows Server 2012 R2 was to change the TEMP and TMP environmental variables for the user and then restart the system and deploy again (restarting VS was not enough). These temp variables are where VS does the temp publish.
Restarting visual studio after changing temp variables didn't do the trick, had to reboot system.
Try quitting Visual Studio, delete the relevant pubxml.user file in your PublishProfiles directory, restart VS and publish. Worked on VS 2019.
First:
Build in release Configuration.
In Project Properties-> page select All files and folders under
Package/Publish Web.
Rebuild solution (after Clean solution).
now publish.
While publishing recheck what u have opted.
this should do it. It did for me!:)
I am getting this error a lot:
Feature '{insert feature here}' cannot be used because it is not part of the
ISO-2 C# language specification
I am working on a .NET 3.5 website that I've worked on on and off for about two years. I've never seen this error before my most recent around of updates. I'm using a decent amount of LINQ coding throughout and I get these errors related to much of the LINQ code. Based on what I've read it seems like even though I'm using .NET 3.5, for some reason it thinks I'm using 2.0. But I can't find anything that says how to fix it.
One example of a problem is that if I try to add a new item to the App_Code directory, I do not get the option to add a LINQ to SQL dbml file.
If anyone can shed some light on how exactly I would fix this, I would much appreciate it.
I was unable to locate an "Advanced" option under the build tab. I have a feeling it is probably because it is a web app. I looked through the web.config and found 2 parts that may be important. Most things referenced 3.5.0.0 or v3.5. The settings are consistent with older backups of the web.config from when there were no errors. By the way, only intellisense and things within VS2010 are giving me problems. The website is running error free.
I have completed a total uninstall and re-install of VS2010 and I'm still having the same issue. I fired up my old install of VS2008 and I am NOT having this issue there. However, I would MUCH prefer to use VS2010 on this project.
I opened the website in VS2010 on my work computer, and there are no errors reported. This is making me think that there is something on my laptop that is causing the problem. As I noted above, I completely reinstalled Visual Studio 2010 and I am still having the problem. What does this leave? I have only one extension installed in VS, and it's the same one at work and on my laptop. Also, I did not reinstall the extension after reinstalling VS, and the problem persists.
Both PC's run Win7 Ultimate. Have VS2008 and VS2010 installed. VS2010 has the same extension installed on both. On my laptop I have the full version of SQL Server 2008 installed, but only the Management Studio on my desktop (we have a server in the office). Would SS2008 have anything to do with it?
Go to your project properties, the Build tab, Advanced - that should allow you to set which version of C# you want to use. It should default to the latest version supported by the version of Visual Studio you're using, but it sounds like at some point you've switched it to ISO-2.
(That's certainly true for Windows projects and class libraries - there may be a different location in a web app. In particular, have a look in Web.config.)
If this has only started happening recently, I'd have a look through your source control history at changes to any configuration files. Also try creating a new project of the same type, and see if that has the same problem.
Jon Skeet's answer is mostly correct. The location for the update is in the "Property Pages" which I got to by right-clicking on the name of the website, clicking Property Pages, the Build item, then target framework.
The extension I use, Solution Navigator, has it's own heading for the solution. Right-clicking on it DOES NOT give me the Property Pages option. By chance I right clicked on the title of the website under the solution heading and was presented with the Property Pages option. In there was the Build tab which contained the target framework option.
Once I finally found the target framework option, it was indeed set to .NET 2.0 for some reason. I changed it to 3.5, reloaded the solution, and now it works great.
Thanks a million Jon for your help and time working with me!!
When using Visual Studio 2008, when I "Publish Web Site", the application builds correctly, but then I get a "Publish failed" message:
What possible reasons are there for this, and how can I prevent it?
I had the same issue. Nightmare to identify the problem, because the logs and outputs show no errors or failures. I simply get "Build: 39 succeeded" and "Publish: 1 failed".
I resolved the problem by systematically removing all NuGet packages one at a time (and removing code that references it) until I identified the offending one.
This takes a LONG time!
However, the answer for me was Microsoft.Net.Compilers.
No idea how I ended up with that in my project, but as soon as I removed that package, everything publishes fine again.
Edit - For what it's worth, this problem occurs on VS 2008, 2012 and 2015 but does not occur on 2017.
You can try this:
Perform precompilation against the web application.
Clear the target directory(virtual directory in IIS or physical file
folder) and deploy all the files (of the web application) into the target
directory.
In the output window you can check at which stage does the publish website
operation fail. For example, at the first stage, if there are some error
which will only occur at precompilation, that will cause the stage 1 fail.
Or some times if the target directory has something configured incorrectly.
Such as the IIS virtual dir is not set to the correct ASP.NET version or
some old files are locked and prevent them from being cleared. Mostly,
publish failed will be caused by IIS side configuration issue such as
authentication setting....
Source link
You can open the output window by pressing Ctrl+W, O.
Sometimes it's because you need to be running VS as Administrator to be able to write to the target directory.
Check the Output messages, they should help you solve the problem
I had to copy project to C:\a\ and than publish. I suspect problems with long path. Strange, but worked for me.
The conclusion is: Try another VS edition and see if that does it.
Here is what did it for me.
I have VS 2013 Pro and Visual Studio 2015 Community. I sort of use one or another to work on my MVC project and all was fine. Then all of the sudden VS 2013 could not publish though it would build just fine. There was no erros other than some silly ...code is not returned from all paths...
So when I open it in VS 2017 - it published the same project just fine. I am suspecting a compiling issue - because that was the stage it would fail at.
Hope that helps you save a bit of time.
Not sure if this happens in different versions of Visual Studio, but at least in 2015 Professional Edition, the problem arises when we try to update all Nuget packages from the solution using the Packages Manager.
As pointed out by #SimonGoldstone the issue is caused by the package "Microsoft.Net.Compilers". By default, the package gets added to the solution while creating a new web application. The default version 1.0.0 does not introduce any problems. I was able to keep testing with latest versions until 2.4.0 and everything works fine, but from 2.6.0 henceforth is when it all starts. If an update is strictly required, I would recommend updating the aforementioned package until version 2.4.0. After doing some research, seems that some bugs on later versions than 2.4.0 are introduced and not fixed on the long term. What is curious though, is how this problem gets included on Nuget with no basic quality control checkpoint.
There are many proposed solutions for this. I think they are overcomplicating the issue.
I found the following worked for me:
Locate the obj(Release or Debug) folder in your solution
Inside the Release or Debug folder delete the CONTENTS of the 'AspnetCompileMerge' folder
Now try and publish.
Make sure you empty the target folder (manually) before publishing. Sometimes vs cant delete a file which will result in a failed publish
After trying a Rebuild, having other Projects in my Solution able to publish correctly, and changing my publish location to the C: drive (locally attached) instead of pushing to a mapped network drive, I was still having an issue where the only error output said:
========== Build: 5 succeeded, 0 failed, 0 up-to-date, 0 skipped ==========
========== Publish: 0 succeeded, 1 failed, 0 skipped ==========
My solution is targeting x86, but I think during a Git Merge, this project had it's profile switched to Any CPU. After creating an x86 profile for the project and having it match the target of the publish goal and of the active solution configuration, I was able to successfully publish again.
Check Project BIn directory. there must be a DLL of your page or control. which has to be recreated during publish. So exclude it or remove it
I ran into this same problem today and it was due to the Thumbs.db file that was created when I opened my images folder to look for an image. I deleted the file and the project deployed successfully. Hope this helps someone else in the same situation.
Delete publish profile and create another one . Worked for me
In my case, I was publishing to a directory in a mapped network drive, but the Output panel/window was indicating that the location didn't exist. The path was correct, and the drive was fully accessible. The problem resolved itself when I re-set the path to publish to in Visual Studio by using the ... button.
With me it was simple - the dist folder was locked. I unlocked it by an unlocker and the publishing resumed.
I have several user controls that are registered in the web.config, and have a ClassName in the .ascx file header. For normal builds everything works fine, but with a publish those class names were not recognized anymore. At some point I found out that the errors were not in my regular code files, but in copies in a temp directory for publishing.
I had "Precompile during publishing" turned on (to be found under Settings > File Publish Options). Turning that option off worked for me.
I had the same issue with VS2017 with a website project. Build worked, but publish gave me an error:
Error CS0012: The type 'System.Net.Http.HttpMessageHandler' is defined in an assembly that is not referenced. You must add a reference to assembly 'System.Net.Http, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a'.
All my projects already had a reference to System.Net.Http so it was really confusing.
To fix it, I had to copy System.Net.Http.dll into my website project / bin folder so publish could find it and copy it to my web host. I found System.Net.Http.dll by looking at another project's references (a class library), then System.Net.Http.dll Properties, and seeing the path (C:\Program Files(x86)\Reference Assemblies\Microsoft\Framework.NetFramework\v4.6\System.Net.Http.dll).
i know iam late but i think it should use for someone whos searching for this query.
just uninstall all your nuget pakages , then clean and rebuilt solution ,
now click on publish , sure it works and u will see publishing starts and works correctly now
If any one had changed the version of the project file and related framework. then this type of issue happened.
please go to "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Professional\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v16.0\Web" location for visual studio published and build setting -> edit -> comment the force copy of all file section.
I had one file that was not found. I had copied in a png file to replace a jpg in the content folder , same name except filetype extension.
Project built fine, but refused to build and publish . changed extension of file so it could find that file name and it worked - no errors amazing 1 thing wrong and everything else is an error.
The case for me was that Visual Studio was not signed in to Azure, but provided no indication of that. I edited the publish profile, clicked "Validate Connection" then clicked "Save" and then it worked.
I was working on a feature branch, which was failing. Switched to Master Branch, deleted the feature one and created another one. It worked.
What caused my issue was a little different, but has similarities to some of the reasons stated above.
I managed to trash my local copy of a given application and did a GIT hard reset to get the most recent from the repository in question. This in turn, wiped out the web.config file (which was not stored in the GIT repository for various reasons).
This cause configuration information for various NuGet packages to be "lost" (since it was stored in web.config).
Fortunately, I had "backed up" the web.config, so once I figured out it was not out there (a migration failed because I was unable to connect to the database), I was able to replace it.
Tried the publish again, after fixing the web.config, and everything worked perfectly.
If you are opting for the "Delete all existing files prior to publish" in the publish web dialog box, then make sure that the Visual Studio is started with Admin rights. Right click the Visual Studio and click Run as Administrator. Hope this helps.