How to view exception information in Visual Studio Express?

Question

How do you view exception details such as messages and stack traces in VS Express 2012? I use Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows Phone, and whenever an exception is thrown during debugging, all Visual Studio makes a selection of the line of code in which the exception occurred.

Answer 1

The exception assistant has been removed from the express versions of Visual Studio 2012. From here:

You are correct that we intentionally removed the WDX sku exclusion assistant for VS 2012. In 2012, this function requires professionals and higher. You should be able to view exception information in the view window, including the internal exception.

We will consider adding this dialog box back to express skus in a future version, but we currently have no plans to change this to 2012.

Mark Payne

QA Visual Studio Debugger

If there is no update in one day, to add it back, you will have to buy the full version of VS 2012.

Answer 2

You can click the Break button, and then view the exception details in the Locals section. Find $exception there.

Answer 3

Yes, what a worry! But, fortunately, if the exception is not thrown into the external code, you can neutralize the situation by temporarily wrapping the line of code violation in the catch try block, and then setting the breakpoint inside the catch: