Visual Studio 2015 not presenting the XAML design pane

 

 

 

 

Update 12/3/2015

• You might want to try looking to see if you have two Windows SDK and uninstall the older one, which you may only be able to tell from the version numbers.  See comments below for more information.  Thank you Nicolas!  However, when I did uninstall the extra Windows SDK from my system, it did not fix the problem, but it might with your installation.  I will have to continue to use the workaround below, not a big impact for me.
• What happened to my internet history?  Figured that one out as well, not that it has anything to do with the topic of this blog.  I am using CCleaner and forgot to make sure that my history is not cleaned out.  And that is why I couldn’t find those articles that I got my solution from, again apologies about not having the references and acknowledgements.

 

Original Blog:

It’s a quiet week here at Microsoft and so I updated my VS 2015 to Update 1 on my machine that didn’t have it.  Usually I code the XAML by hand, for no good reason, I like the use of controls, but it seems like there is a tendency to focus on code.  Then I noticed that my install didn’t have the XAML Designer view in C# or C++, didn’t appear when I hit ctrl+F7, bummer.  So I tried a repair, and you know how long that takes right?  Didn’t work.  Uninstall and reinstalled, still didn’t work.  The designer also didn’t show up in Blend.

Searched the web, but what was the correct search string?  Designer Pane? Designer View? Designer view vs 2015? Eventually I ran across something close for C#, nothing for XAML/C++, mainly because I am likely the only person who uses it.

I found the solution on Stackoverflow, but my history was set to not to track my work and I closed the browser.  So apologies for not providing the references.

Temporary Fix for C#

In C# you will need to open the Project Properties and change the Targeting section from “Windows 10 (10.0; Build 10240)

Temporary fix for C++

In case you are one of the tens of people using C++ with XAML, there is a similar fix for C++, using the Project Property Page but the dialog is quite different.  Change from 10.0.10586 to 10.010240.0

Comments

• Anonymous
  December 29, 2015
  You are not the first or the only one :) Answer : You have q2 Windows SDK installed which make visual studio confused. just uninstall the Oldest SDK.