Visual Studio 2017 Community Powerpacks

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2018-02-09

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_{Friday, February 9, 2018 11:45 PM}

I installed VS 2017 Community after Win 10 clean reinstall. I have lineshape and rectangleshape from VS Powerpacks in my toolbox. I am able to insert them in a new form. When I try to open an existing form with line or rectangle I get error messages that they don't exist. What am I missing?

Ron

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_{Monday, February 12, 2018 6:04 AM ✅Answered}

Hi AmateurRon,

Glad to hear this issue has been solved by yourself. Please share your answer here if you are free, I will introduce this experience to other forum users who face the same condition. Please mark your reply to close this case.

Best Regards,

Cherry

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_{Saturday, February 10, 2018 12:05 AM}

Hello,

When you say "When I try to open an existing form with line or rectangle I get error messages that they don't exist", if that form in question was done with a prior version of Visual Studio and Power pack most likely they are not upward compatible.

So is that form a brand new form created in VS2017 or earlier version? If an earlier version and you have done a clean solution then rebuild and still get this error you will need to redo that form.

When I try to open an existing form with line or rectangle I get error messages that they don't exis

Please remember to mark the replies as answers if they help and unmark them if they provide no help, this will help others who are looking for solutions to the same or similar problem. Contact via my Twitter (Karen Payne) or Facebook (Karen Payne) via my MSDN profile but will not answer coding question on either.
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_{Saturday, February 10, 2018 1:02 AM}

Thanks for the reply. As is the norm, I didn't give enough information. All the forms that do not work now were working fine before the reinstall of Win 10 and Visual Studio. I have version 15.5.6 of VS Community. Perhaps I need to uninstall and again install Visual Studio.

Ron

_{Saturday, February 10, 2018 1:30 AM}

Thanks for the reply. As is the norm, I didn't give enough information. All the forms that do not work now were working fine before the reinstall of Win 10 and Visual Studio. I have version 15.5.6 of VS Community. Perhaps I need to uninstall and again install Visual Studio.

Ron

The Power Packs are not included with around 2013 and above. You need to install them and then reference them properly in your project which has now changed.

/en-us/dotnet/visual-basic/developing-apps/windows-forms/power-packs-controls

This is for 2013 but I assume 2017 is basically the same.

http://ntcoder.com/bab/2013/12/20/visualbasic-powerpack-missing-from-visual-studio-2013/

Finally, I would consider doing away with the power pack as it is no longer supported and may behave differently in later .net and os versions.

_{Saturday, February 10, 2018 3:01 AM}

Thanks. My intention is to spend the time to get rid of the Powerpacks. But I need to get the forms working as is so I can do the changes. This is a serious problem - I have about 40 forms that do not work.

Ron

_{Saturday, February 10, 2018 4:08 AM}

Hi Ron,

I guess what you want is "VisualBasic PowerPacks". If this is correct, you can download and set/include it in Visual Studio 2017. Please refer to the following article:
VisualBasic PowerPack missing from Visual Studio 2013?
http://ntcoder.com/bab/2013/12/20/visualbasic-powerpack-missing-from-visual-studio-2013/

# I can use VisualBasic PowerPacks in my Visual Studio 2017.

Regards,

Ashidacchi

_{Saturday, February 10, 2018 11:32 AM}

Thanks for the reply. As is the norm, I didn't give enough information. All the forms that do not work now were working fine before the reinstall of Win 10 and Visual Studio. I have version 15.5.6 of VS Community. Perhaps I need to uninstall and again install Visual Studio.

Ron

So with Power Pack installed, they are seen in your toolbox and there is a reference to the library for the current version and you are still having issues please consider reporting the issue here. They are always reactive to problems reported e.g. I had an issue with unit test, reported it and was asked to try it with 15.6 and yes it fixed the issue. Now that does not help you that my issue was resolved (and there were 55 followers on the issue which meant it was valid) but the point being is sometimes if you have done everything right (which I assume you have) then it's time to report the problem. Of course if you have not done everything right that is a different story.

When I did a search on the site, there were no issues like yours but doesn't mean it's not valid.

An alternate to using the link is the following button in the IDE menu bar.

_{Saturday, February 10, 2018 7:26 PM}

I think I see the problem. When I open the Designer.vb for the form, I see that some lineshape/rectangleshape items are preceded with Microsoft.VisualBasic.Powerpacks (these do not produce errors) and the ones in error are not preceded as such. Is it safe to edit the designer.vb ? I have no idea how this could have occurred - everything was working fine before the reinstall.

Ron

_{Sunday, February 11, 2018 3:10 AM}

Problem solved.

Ron

_{Monday, February 12, 2018 10:42 PM}

Thanks all for your help. I am not exactly sure what was amiss. As I looked at the form's designer.vb I saw only "LineShape" and "RectangleShape" in some cases. So I edited the designer.vb by preceding them with "Microsoft.VisualBasic.PowerPacks." where it was missing.

Everything is now working fine, and I am in the process of replacing PowerPack items with DrawLine and DrawRectangle on 109 forms.

Ron

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