XAML Designer not showing up

Question

In MS Visual Studio Express 2013 for Windows Desktop:

I\'m learning C# and following an example that shows how to create a user interface in a .xaml file. https://ms

Answer 1

Confirming Sam's answer for VS 2015; VS seems to have a reproducible feature: 1. Create a new solution (Windows Universal, say) 2. Create a new XAML view page in that solution 3. If Designer won't load on that page, do what Sam says: Right click on your project in solution explorer and Change the Target version to Windows 10 (10.0; Build 10240). I had the same issue on a project, created a new test solution to explore the issue, and had the same problem. Sam's fix worked.

Answer 2

In VS2017 v15.8.9 I found the designer wasn't displaying e.g. when right clicking in a xaml view's code pane and selecting View Designer.

Performing the following resolved it for me: I went into Tools > Options > XAML Designer and the Enable XAML Designer option was ticked. So, I unticked it, clicked Ok on the Options dialog to close it.

I exited and restarted Visual Studio and again went into Tools > Options > XAML Designer, ticked the Enable XAML Designer, clicked Ok, restarted Visual Studio, and it's now working.

Answer 3

I had the same problem for a different reason. I had excluded-from-project the XAML file. When I clicked to edit it there was just the XAML code, no picture. It took a while to spot.

Answer 4

For some reason it used "(XML) Text Editor" as the default editor for XAML, to fix this you should right-click your file in the solution explorer then select "Open with.." and select "XAML UI Designer"

Answer 5

I had this issue and was able to fix it by uninstalling visual studio AND deleting the Visual Studio folder in my Program Files. Apparently after uninstalling there are still some remaining folders.

My case might have been a bit special though. I have a small C drive and visual studio was always installing files there no mater what I did to change the install dir, so I created a symlink to force it to install to a different directory. That worked, but much later I had to reinstall VS and the symlink was causing an installation error, which prevented some components from installing. So yeah hope this helps

Answer 6

I have no idea what the issue was, but uninstalling and re-installing the same software did the trick.

Interesting