VS 2017 Metadata file '.dll could not be found

Question

I know there is another question with exact the same problem, but I went trough all those answers, and none helped me. :( (This was the question.)

I just created a new A

Answer 1

Steps in Fixing this Error: MetaData File .dll could not be found.

1. Clean All Projects.

2. Unload All Projects.

3. Reload All Projects.

4. ReBuild Solution.

Then problem solved.

Answer 2

Cleaning my solution caused this problem with Visual Studio 2017. Unloading/reloading projects or more cleaning made no difference. Only thing that worked was closing and restarting Visual Studio.

Answer 3

I had this same error. In my case I had built a library (call it commsLibrary) that referenced other libraries by including them as projects in my solution. Later, when I built a project and added my commsLibrary, whenever I would build I got the metadata file cannot be found error. So I added the libraries that my comms library referenced to the current project, then it was able to build.

Answer 4

After facing so many troubles, here is the solution that I found.

1. open your project folder.
2. find Your_Project_Name.csproj[Visual C# Project file (.csproj)]

3. open that file in any text editor and find your missing file ItemGroup.

   <ItemGroup> <None Include="..." /> </ItemGroup>

4. remove that ItemGroup and open once again your project and build

5. If that reference is important for you then add once again.

Answer 5

I fix this problem following this steps:

1. Clean Solution
2. Close Visual Studio
3. Deleting /bin from the project directory
4. Restart Visual Studio
5. Rebuild Solution

Answer 6

The problem was that I had some other normal error messages in my project, and apparently after I fixed those and when I cleaned and built my project AGAIN, then all .dlls succeeded.

Make sure you don't have any other error messages in your project and if you do, fix those first!