Thursday 18 October 2012

Fix for VS build error: The "FindRibbons" task could not be loaded

I opened an Outlook customisation/plug-in project to do some modifications today and on building received the following delightful error message:

The "FindRibbons" task could not be loaded from the assembly Microsoft.VisualStudio.Tools.Office.BuildTasks, Version=10.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a.  Confirm that the <UsingTask> declaration is correct, that the assembly and all its dependencies are available, and that the task contains a public class that implements Microsoft.Build.Framework.ITask

Wow, highlight of my week!

It looks like the issue is related to installing VS2012 side by side with VS2010, it updates the dlls relating to MSBuild, but not the references held in the standard configuration file. The Microsoft forums (via Google) found me my answer in a reply by 'sriram_electric' (thank you!):

For those who encounter this problem, goto C:\Program Files\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v10.0\OfficeTools and open the Microsoft.VisualStudio.Tools.Office.targets file.
Replace all 10.0.0.0 with 11.0.0.0

In my case I had to go to Program Files (x86) as I'm running a 64bit OS, but other than that, and a quick restart of VS, the problem was resolved.

If this doesn't work for you, there are other suggested solutions given in the thread above.

- rob

7 comments:

  1. Thanks it worked for me :-0

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks it worked from me too.

    Narasimha

    ReplyDelete
  3. this solution works for me too. Remind that if you installed VS2013 then you have to use 12 instead of 11

    ReplyDelete