VS 2008 designer "Could not find type...."

Question

I'm getting this error in visual studio 2008 in a Mobile Desktop application .NET 3.5.

Could not find type 'MyNamespace.MyType'. Please make sure that the assembly that contains this type is referenced. If this type is a part of your development project, make sure that the project has been successfully built.

This shows up when opening a form. The type that it can't reference is a user control that is part of the same project. Nothing is wrong with the namespaces. This is maddening -- the project builds just fine.

Also, the referenced control is not a generic class like in this article: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9314/could-not-find-type-error-loading-a-form-in-the-designer

UPDATE: well now later it seems to be working. This seems to be a sporadic problem...

Answer 1

Is the actual line that is causing a problem in the Form.designer.cs/vb file? Occasionally there are name qualification issues that result in the error you are seeing. Try opening up the designer file and changing the name as follows

C#

global::MyNamespace.MyType

VB.Net

Global.MyNamespace.MyType

After that, rebuild and reopen the designer

Answer 2

Might be worth looking at the accepted answer for this similar question