How to: Troubleshoot templates
Applies to: Visual Studio Visual Studio for Mac
Note
This article applies to Visual Studio 2017. If you're looking for the latest Visual Studio documentation, see Visual Studio documentation. We recommend upgrading to the latest version of Visual Studio. Download it here
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 New Project dialog box.
To validate the vstemplate file
Locate the .zip file that contains the template.
Extract the .zip file.
On the File menu in Visual Studio, choose Open > File.
Select the vstemplate file for the template, and choose Open.
Verify that the XML of the vstemplate file adheres to the template schema. For more information on the vstemplate schema, see Template schema reference.
Note
To get IntelliSense support while authoring the vstemplate file, add a
xmlns
attribute to theVSTemplate
element, and assign it a value ofhttp://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/vstemplate/2005
.Save and close the vstemplate file.
Select the files included in your template, right-click, and choose Send to > Compressed (zipped) folder. The files that you selected are compressed into a .zip file.
Place the new .zip file in the same directory as the old .zip file.
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 Troubleshoot template discovery (extensibility).