Web.config conversion option is grayed out

Question

In VS2010, when I right-click on my web.config file, the option “Add Config Transforms” is grayed out.

Any idea how I can get this back?

Answer 1

It was highlighted in gray, because for all of the listed configurations have already been converted.

I could not see the conversion files because vb.net in its infinite wisdom decided not to display the associated configuration files. There seems to be no choice but to select "show all files" to see them.

Answer 2

You can also completely exclude the configuration manager dialog and directly edit the project file by adding as many additional configuration files as necessary.

This is especially useful when using a more advanced configuration conversion tool such as CodeAssassin.ConfigTransform or SlowCheetah.

<ItemGroup> <Content Include="web.config"> <SubType>Designer</SubType> </Content> <Content Include="web.debug.local.config"> <DependentUpon>web.config</DependentUpon> </Content> <Content Include="web.debug.cloudstaging.config"> <DependentUpon>web.config</DependentUpon> </Content> <Content Include="web.release.cloudprod.config"> <DependentUpon>web.config</DependentUpon> </Content> </ItemGroup> 

Answer 3

If you really want to see the "Add configuration conversions" option enabled, add a new configuration using the ConfigurationManager. Or delete any web.release.config or web.Debug.config configuration file. This is a limitation of Visual Studio to have one configuration file for each environment.

Answer 4

What worked for me was to right-click on the publication profile and select “Add configuration conversion”, then I copied the existing transformation code for QA, UAT, Production, etc.

Answer 5

Rebooting Visual Studio worked for me. I will not say that this will work for everyone, but it is definitely worth a try.

I had 5 configurations, but only 3 conversion files. I was not in debug mode, but the option was still unavailable.

Answer 6

I had a problem after adding additional configurations from Configuration Manager.

I had to remove them and re-add them before Visual Studio included "Add Config Transforms"

I assume that the configurations for them in the web project were deleted / corrupted at some point, and this should be reset.

Answer 7

We have a solution with over 140 projects and over 13 different configurations, besides the default Debug and Release configurations. I ran into the same problem with one of my projects in this solution. The Add Config Transforms element was grayed out, but I only had the Debug and Release transforms web.config. I believe that this is due to the fact that the project was probably added to the solution after creating all user configurations.

I went into Configuration Manager and noticed that the project does not have all the other configurations available. I had to manually add each missing configuration, specifying a name as well. Once this is done, Add Config Transforms is available.

Answer 8

If this is a custom configuration that you add through Configuration Manager, be sure to check the "Create new project configurations" box (it is not installed by default) when creating the configuration.

Answer 9

I had a script in which I had an existing configuration called "Dev". There was no Web.Dev.congig file in Web.config, and the menu option for adding was disabled.

I deleted the configuration and added it again. After that, he added a new Web.Dev.config file and turned on the Add Configuration Conversion menu option. I suspect some confusion has occurred in the csproj file.

It appears that some of these confusions have been resolved in VS2015.

Answer 10

I had the same problem. My solution was to install SlowCheetah to add another configuration conversion. Strange, but it works very well.