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Visual Studio and Blend 4 Design Problem

I have a VS 2010 C# solution file that I am opening in Blend 4. The file opens with no errors, however if I attempt to build it in Blend the program lists a few missing references and then crashes Blend. Here is the issue that I am really trying to solve since I think I can solve the missing references in due course. Once the solution is opened in blend the Design tool for any XAML does not display at all. VIEW >> Active Document View >> Design View, etc. are all grayed out. What is the secret to having a programmer work in VS and hand off solution files for a designer like me to work on GUI in Blend. It seems MS has made this a difficult procedure to master.

user1308145
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It sounds like you created the project using the Class Library project template instead of the WPF User Control Library template. When you put these two project files side by side, you'll see that the WPF User Control Library project has this additional line near the top of the project file:

<ProjectTypeGuids>{60dc8134-eba5-43b8-bcc9-bb4bc16c2548};{FAE04EC0-301F-11D3-BF4B-00C04F79EFBC}</ProjectTypeGuids>

This is what tells Blend it can display a design surface for the items in the project. There's lots of stuff you can make in Visual Studio that cannot be displayed in Blend, so Visual Studio needs some way of communicating to Blend that it should attempt to load designers. Edit your .csproj file to contain the above GUIDs and I bet it will work.

Mike Post
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