Problem:

When trying to open a project in Visual Studio, get the error message like this:

“The project file *** cannot be opened. The project type is not supported by this installation.”

Error in Visual Studio 2010:

The project file *** cannot be opened. The project type is not supported by this installation.

Error in Visual Studio 2012:

The project file *** cannot be opened. The project type is not supported by this installation.

 

Cause:

You haven’t installed the neccessary sdks yet.

 

Solution:

Download and install the related sdks. How to figour out what sdks needed? Here is a example:

1. Right click the project node in the Solution Explorer panel in the Visual Studio, and choose “Edit ***.csproj” to view the project file.

Edit project file

2. Go through the project file and check all the suspicious references, notice their hint paths whether they exist on your machine. For example, I found 2 <Reference> nodes contain a special path that does not exist in my computer.

    <Reference Include="Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk">
      <HintPath>C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\Extensions\Microsoft\Dynamics CRM 2011 Developer Tools\1.0\Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk.dll</HintPath>
    </Reference>
    <Reference Include="Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk.Workflow">
      <HintPath>C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\Extensions\Microsoft\Dynamics CRM 2011 Developer Tools\1.0\Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk.Workflow.dll</HintPath>
    </Reference>

The project file *** cannot be opened. The project type is not supported by this installation.

3. Then google the special folder name that does not exist on your machine, and download it and install it, then restart Visual Studio and open the project again, you will be succeed. For example, I searched “Dynamics CRM 2011 Developer Tools” and found out I can download it from here. Then under ~\sdk\tools\developertoolkit, install crmdevelopertools_installer.msi for Visual Studio 2010 and crmdevelopertoolsvs12_installer.msi for Visual Studio 2012.