The web publishing extension is not installed which is required to publish

Question

I was tring to deploy an ASP.NET Web Application to a Windows Azure Web Site by following the tutorial through this link: https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/net/tutorials/get-started/ After download the public profile, which is a ".PublishSettings" file, I go back to Visual Studio and right-click the project in Solution Explorer and select Publish from the context menu as the tutorial said. However, a warning box jumped up and it showed me that "The Web Publishing extension is not installed which is required to publish. You can install it from http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=208120."

I already installed "Windows Azure SDK for .NET (VS 2012)" and I also tried to uninstall this and install again, but the same problem is still there.

Anyone knows how to solve this? I am really appreciated.

Answer 1

I ran into 2 issues, which were related. One was the web publishing extension is not installed which is required to publish, and the other was the web extension package did not load.

I'm upvoting and reposting user3918092's solution for others who run into this issue and do everything including:

1. Deleting the ComponentModelCache out of
   C:\Users\...\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\12.0 and
   C:\Users\...\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\VisualStudio\12.0
2. Repairing Azure SDK 2.4 and VS2013U3 Uninstalling and reinstalling both Azure SDK 2.4 and VS2013U3
3. Removing extensions from the solution
4. Ignoring the extensions on VS startup
5. Using devenv /setup and devenv /updateconfiguration to try to reset the configuration

The solution is:

Reinstall the following items to your GAC using the following commands from the vs command line run as an administrator:

gacutil -i "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\Common7\IDE\Extensions\Microsoft\Web Tools\Publish\Microsoft.VisualStudio.Web.Publish.dll"  
gacutil -i "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\Common7\IDE\Extensions\Microsoft\Web Tools\Publish\Microsoft.VisualStudio.Web.Internal.Contracts.dll"

Thanks to user3918092!

Answer 2

I had the same problem on Visual Studio 2013 (Asp.net and web tools 2013 extensions have not been installed)

Solve it by re-install Visual Studio 2013 update 3.

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=43721

Answer 3

This has worked for me. I had Visual Studio express 2012 then installed Visual Studio 2013 needed the azure tools so I installed 2.4. I lost publishing at this stage and unistalled Visual Studio express 2012.

So that is how I think it got out of kilter.

The solution was to reset the assemblies for Contract and Publishing using the Developer command prompt as Administrator.

If you have used the default installation setting then this is probably the path

gacutil -i "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\Common7\IDE\Extensions\Microsoft\Web Tools\Publish\Microsoft.VisualStudio.Web.Publish.dll"
gacutil -i "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\Common7\IDE\Extensions\Microsoft\Web Tools\Publish\Microsoft.VisualStudio.Web.Internal.Contracts.dll"

Answer 4

Same issue with Visual Studio 2015.1 after installing a Web Tools update.

The assmeblies that have to be installed into gac are now:

gacutil -i "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\Common7\IDE\Extensions\Microsoft\Web Tools\Publish\Microsoft.VisualStudio.Web.Publish.dll"
gacutil -i "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\Common7\IDE\Extensions\Microsoft\Web Tools\Publish\Microsoft.VisualStudio.Web.Publish.Core.Contracts.dll"
gacutil -i "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\Common7\IDE\Extensions\Microsoft\Web Tools\Publish\Microsoft.VisualStudio.Web.Publish.Contracts.dll"

Answer 5

I have the same problem. After reinstalling VS 2013 update 4 and Azure SDK 2.6 problem still persists.

But then I tried the next thing: In section Control Panel > Programs > Programs and Features select and repair Microsoft ASP.NET and Web Tools 2013.4.

And publish option started to work again.

Answer 6

I had this issue upgrading VS 2013 Ultimate from update 3 to 4. I had also a message about Microsoft.VisualStudio.Web.PasteJson.JsonPackage did not load properly when loading a Solution. Repairing VS was enough for me to work again the publishing option.

Answer 7

http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/758298/not-able-to-publish-web-application-after-installing-visual-studio-2012-rtw has a work-around but it's a painful reinstall with additional folder deletion.

Answer 8

register GAC also work when have this problem after update VS 2013.2 to VS 2013.3

Answer 9

I had similar problem, but my error is related to scaffolding item.

I need to uninstall visual studio and went through all the related folders, registry and re-install visual studio in order to make it work!

Folders that I checked:

• %App Data%
• %Program Data%
• %Program Files%
• Windows

Hope that help :)

Answer 10

I uninstalled VS2012 again. Before I re-installed (a 3rd time), I went to my user's AppData and Documents folders and found all instances of Visual Studio 2012 and deleted them. Then I re-installed VS2012 and now Web Publishing is working.

Folders I deleted after uninstall:

• C:\Users\USERNAME\Documents\Visual Studio 2012
• C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\11.0
• C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Microsoft Visual Studio\11.0
• C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0
• C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0

Answer 11

I had this happen today out of the blue for a vs2013 project that was publishing fine previously.

I solved it by downloading a 'Visual Studio Web Publish Update' package from here.