visual studio website - lots of random errors but still building?

Question

I have a ASP.NET website written by someone a while ago, I don't think they used VS to build their sites but unfortunately am not sure what they did use.

I open as website and build .. no errors.

As soon as I open up any of the pages or classes the intellisense moans about nearly everything, starting with

Error 25 Statement cannot appear outside of a method body/multiline lambda.

on the using statements but literally errors on everyline. But still builds fine.

Any ideas how I can resolve this? I can still build the site but if I make any real errors I can't tell where they have come from and also I have no intellisense.

Edit-- an example if I open one of the simplest files on the site.

using System;
using System.Data;
using System.Data.SqlClient;
using System.Collections;
using System.Configuration;
using System.Web;
using System.Web.Security;
using System.Web.UI;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts;
using System.Web.UI.HtmlControls;

public partial class About : System.Web.UI.Page
{

    protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        Master.bodyClass = "about"; 
    }

}

The error list goes straight to 71 Errors on the single file.

Error   26  Syntax error.   PATH\about.aspx 1   PATH\   1
Error   27  Syntax error.   PATH\about.aspx 1       PATH\   1
Error   28  Syntax error.   PATH\about.aspx 1   PATH\   1
Error   29  'Class' statement must end with a matching 'End Class'. PATH\about.aspx 1   PATH\   1
Error   30  Declaration expected.   PATH\about.aspx 1   PATH\   1
Error   31  Bracketed identifier is missing closing ']'.    PATH\about.aspx 1   PATH\   1
Error   33  End of statement expected.  PATH\about.aspx 1   PATH\   1
Error   34  Syntax error.   PATH\about.aspx 1   PATH\   1

(to include the first 8 errors, have changed removed the project name / path)

It will still build correctly (the errors don't seem to bother the compiler), but makes it very difficult to work with.

EDIT -

line 1 of the aspx file

<%@ Page MasterPageFile="~/master.master" CodeFile="index.aspx.cs" Inherits="About" %>

Answer 1

Visual Studio thinks that your ASPX files are VB.Net rather than C#.

Change the default language in Web.config (<compilation defaultLanguage="C#">).

Answer 2

Had the same problem. None of the solutions here worked for me. My language was already set to C# in the ASPX file and web.config.

The solution in my case seemed to lie in excluding the ASPX & code-behind files, then compiling the project - VS complains about the missing file!

Then including the files back in cleared out the problem.

Answer 3

Old thread, but none of the above solutions worked for me as it persisted. My fix was to exclude the aspx file from the project entirely and include it again. Not sure why none of the above suggestions didn't work, but Intellisense seems to happy again.

As a side note: If this is a solution attempted by anyone, make sure you have Show All Files checked in Solution Explorer, otherwise your file will be hidden once excluded.

Answer 4

To go further, verify that in your .aspx file, the code starts with "<%@ Page Language="C#"..". This manipulation has been described in the answer, but i will notice that it doesn't work IF THE PAGE STARTS WITH COMMENT LINES ! Visual Studio 2010 doesn't verify if the text before the declaration "<%@ Page />" is comment or not.

Example :

<%--<asp:Label Text="This is a comment"></asp:Label>--%>
<%@ Page Language="C#" ... %>

In this example VS 2010 think the page doesn't start at the Page declaration, but at the Label declaration, so, C# code isn't recognized...

Answer 5

I faced the same problem. I encountered the problem, when I copied the .aspx code and pasted it into one "test page" which I used for my reference which by mistake was included in my project. I removed the contents in that test page. The intellisense started working fine. Check in your project if the aspx contents have been copied elsewhere. This should solve your problem.

Answer 6

The problem was caused by copy and paste .aspx xml code. You can exclude the problem files from the whole project. Then add them back, the problem will get fixed.

Answer 7

I know it's too late to answer, but perhaps somebody is looking for an answer. I had the same issue, and in MY case it works,so first lines are:

<%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireUp="True" CodeBehind="reservas.aspx.cs" Inherits="CapaWeb.reservas"%>
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<!-- saved from url=(0014)about:internet -->
<html>
<head runat="server">

I had to ensure the first (and I think the most important) line and the "runat=server"

Also, after adding these lines, I closed all classes. Rebuild the solution and error disappeared.

Answer 8

I had same problem and visual studio suggest close and re-open that file. Close and re-open fixed problems for me.I have no idea why?!! :-\

Answer 9

If this is a ASP.Net WebForms web site, then the markup in .aspx and .ascx is compiled only at runtime.

To compile the markup, use aspnet_compiler. (see also this question)

Update Re: line 1 of the aspx file

<%@ Page MasterPageFile="~/master.master" CodeFile="index.aspx.cs" Inherits="Home" %>

So the file is named about.aspx, the code behind is index.aspx.cs, and the page's class name is Home??

Answer 10

A long shot, but usually when I run into errors like these, I check to make sure that if I'm referencing any other projects, every project is on the same targetted framework. You can check this by Alt+Enter on a project in VS and checking the targetted framework.