I am trying to open a .NET web project that was created using Visual Studio 2003. When I try and open the project, I get an error message that says the following:

The project you are trying to open is a Web project. You need to open it by specifying its URL path.

 

I can not make sense of this error message. Here are the steps I perform to try and open the project.

1. With file explorer, I locate the name of the .NET project I want to open. The name of the project  is  AfundManager.csproj

2. Once I have selected the name of the file "AfundManager.csproj", I right click and on the pop-up window I select "Open with Visual Studio 2003". Once this happens, I get the error message mentioned previously. That is:

The project you are trying to open is a Web project. You need to open it by specifying its URL path.

So I have no idea what the problem is here? Does anyone have any ideas what might be wrong?

 

VS 2003 does not support Web projec based on file system. The complete project and the project file must be under IIS Web. You need to use IIS and create a virtual directory pointing to the project root folder. Then you open Web project by specifying http://localhost/ProjectName.

Hello Mikhail,

I don't care about viewing the web application by typing the  http://localhost/ProjectName in the web browser URL. What I want to do is open this project in Visual Studio 2003. Then access the C#,  and other files visible in visual studio.

Do you know what I mean? So, I should be able to just double click on the project name AfundManager.csproj and it should open up in Visual Studio.net. This isn't happening though? So that's what my problem is?

Bill

 

That is correct. You do open Web projects in VS 2003 via URL, exactly the same way you do in the browser. Then you can access C# files and Web Forms. No, you cannot open by clicking on csproj, sorry. VS 2003 contacts IIS and talks to it via FronPage Server Extensions to read the project file and solution file (csproj and sln) directly from the server. VS 2003 is not able to open Web site from a disk folder (VS 2005 can).

So first you need to set up Web site under IIS and ensure that it works from the browser with ASP.NET 1.1. Then you can open the site by typing URL in the VS 2003.

had the same problem - try going into VS 2003, and click on File > Open > Project from Web and type in \\localhost\[Project_Name] - then double click on the csproj file.

 

cheers!

The problem is your project need the .csproj.webinfo file

 

Content of the file samething like that

Name of file: AfundManager.csproj.webinfo

Content: 

<VisualStudioUNCWeb>
    <Web URLPath = "http://localhost/AfundManager/AfundManager.csproj" />
</VisualStudioUNCWeb>

 i´am suposed your Web site is AfundManager.

 

Sorry but my english is not really good.

 

One think to note is: Check whether you have a virtual directory created for the c sharp project.

Then in Visual Studio IDE goto File -> Open -> Project from Web

 Now you will get a small window, specify the project name. For eg "http://localhost/sampleproject/dotnetProj.csproj"