Error MSB3541: Files has invalid value

visual-studio-2010 asp.net-mvc-3 visual-studio-2012 appharbor

45,209

Solution 1

Try to search the entire solution for the value and remove it from where it occurs, and then delete the obj folder from your project. When you build again it should work.

The obj folders are hidden in Visual Studio. You can see them with a file explorer.

Solution 2

Delete the obj folder within your project and it will fix the issue.

Solution 3

though it is very old question but I would like to add an answer here. when you work with multiple developer in visual studio you should git ignore obj folder, .suo,.sln etc which is only holding the visual studio information user based.

refer to this SO question

45,209

Author by

mosquito87

Updated on February 09, 2022

Comments

mosquito87 over 2 years

I just deployed an asp.net mvc 3 web application to AppHarbor but it failed:

C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\Microsoft.Common.targets(3932,5): error MSB3541: Files has invalid value "<<<<<<< HEAD". Illegal characters in path. [D:\temp\q5cmde4m.uk1\input\MyProject\MyProject.csproj]

This happened after I opened the project with Visual Studio 2012 (the application was created with VS2010).
Joel Martinez over 10 years

wow ... I came across this and thought for sure it wouldn't work, it's so random. Not sure why this happened, but deleting the obj folder from my project directory did the trick :-/
Razvan about 10 years

Some explanation would be that the <<<<<<HEAD tags are created by Git in the merge process. A .gitignore file for Visual Studio added to the repository that excludes the build files should prevent this to happen.
Allen Linatoc almost 9 years

Deleting the obj folder solved the freaking problem
gleichdanke over 7 years

Searching returned no results. I could not find any instance of this text in any file or path. Deleting the obj folder resolved it for me, no more error. Obj is regenerated at the next build once you delete. All good.
Daniel James Bryars over 4 years

@Razvan Curiously the my Obj is in .gitignore, and definitely not checked in. I had a slightly different symptom, but your answer worked. In my case building the individual projects worked fine, but cleaning the solution would fail! Deleting the obj folder cleared this up.
Razvan over 4 years

@DanielJamesBryars I haven't been working on VS projects for a long time so I'm not able to investigate. If it would be to guess, it could be that the obj is still in the repository (added in .gitignore at a later point) and maybe one of your coleagues or the IDE has force-added it's changes.
Mmm over 4 years

I got this nonsensical "illegal characters in path" error as well, and it wouldn't tell me where the characters were. Searching didn't find them. This project did NOT come from git. Deleting the obj folder fixed it as well!
ashokchhetri over 2 years

It works. Thanks !