The target “GetCopyToOutputDirectoryContentProjectItems” does not exist in the project

At the time of developing your Windows Phone 7 application, you might see a build error. The build error describes as “The target ‘GetCopyToOutputDirectoryContentProjectItems’ does not exist in the project”.

This small post will describe you the solution to fix this error and build your WP7 apps smoothly. Continue reading and if you still face the issue, let me know.

Recently after installing Windows Phone 7.1 SDK, I noticed that, though the templates are available through Visual Studio 2010 but I am unable to build the simple phone application. I was getting the following error while building the app:

This is due to improper installation of XNA Game Studio 4.0. To resolve this, you need to reinstall the Windows Phone 7.1 SDK tools but this repair might not resolve this issue and you would spend more time doing uninstallation/reinstallation and/or repairing the SDK tools installation.

As this is due to XNA Game Studio installation, hence the simplest and quickest fix of this is to download and manually install the XNA Game Studio 4.0 Refresh.

Once you download and install the XNA Game Studio 4.0 Refresh, you will be able to build your Windows Phone 7 applications using Visual Studio 2010 again.

Hope this simple solution will help you to fix the error that you faced. If this post helps you, don’t forget to drop a line below. Follow my blog for latest articles, tips and news on Microsoft platform. Don’t forget to subscribe to and ask your technical queries in my Facebook page. I am also available on Twitter and Google+. Also subscribe to the blog feed or newsletter to get the updates directly.