The project file has been moved renamed or is not on your computer
I get this error when I try to load a VS 2008 project from TFS source control:
The project file has been moved, renamed or is not on your computer
After I click OK the project says "unavailable". What is the problem? How do I resolve this? I never had this problem before. Some blogs said to delete the .suo file but I can't locate the .suo file. I deleted the entire project on my local computer so that the next time it opens it will create a new one, but I still get same error.
What typically helps to fix it is deleting the Solution User Options aka "SUO".
VS up to 2013
In the older VS it is stored as a "hidden" SolutionName.suo in the same folder as the main .sln file.
VS2015 or later
In VS2015 the same data was moved to a "hidden" .vs folder under the same folder as the main .sln file.
I just ran into this issue using VS 2013 after renaming a project. Stanley's answer guided me to the solution:
Close VS - delete .suo file - start VS again.
Delete the .suo file in a special way.
- Don't have the solution open when you delete the hidden .suo file.
- Restart VisualStudio.
- Open solution and Add project without error message.
TFS works like most source control packages: It remembers what it has put on your computer so that when you "Get Latest" it only has to get the chnages since your last "Get" instead of having to get absolutely everything.
This has one caveat: If you delete or rename the local files on your disk, TFS won't know that you have done this, and it will still think they are where it left them.
If you then "Get Latest" it will not bother to update the missing files.
You are then likely to get all kinds of "missing file" errors, from TFS and any other tools that look for the files.
To get around it, you need to:
- If you think you might have any changes in there that you don't want to lose, copy the source folder on your PC as a back up just in case!
- Right click on the project (in Solution Explorer) or folder (in Source Control)
- Choose "Get Specific Version" from the context menu
- Choose to get the "Latest Version" and tick the option that says (something like) "force get of files already in your workspace", which tells TFS to forget about what it "knows" and get all the files again anyway.
If you have any locally-changed (writable) files, then be careful. There is a second option that will overwrite these, losing your changes. But you have the backup, so you should be safe. It's generally better to tick this option as well to make sure that all your source code is completely up to date. (But obviously only if you don't mind losing any local changes!)
When you OK, this will forcibly get all the files in the project to your local drive, and should correct the problem.