"Could not reformat the document" in ASP.NET, VS2008

Question

I'm in an ASP.NET UserControl. When I type Control-K, Control-D to reformat all the markup, I get a series of messages from VS 2008:

"Could not reformat the document. The original format was restored."

"Could not complete the action."

"The operation could not be completed. The parameter is incorrect."

Anybody know what causes this?

Edit: OK, that is just...weird.

The problem is here:

<asp:TableCell>
  <asp:Button Text="Cancel" runat="server" ID="lnkCancel" CssClass="CellSingleItem" />
</asp:TableCell>

Somehow that asp:Button line is causing the problem. But if I delete any individual attribute, the formatting works. Or if I add a new attribute, the formatting works. Or if I change the tag to be non-self-closing, it works. But if I undo and leave it as-is, it doesn't work.

All I can figure is that this is some sort of really obscure, bizarre bug.

Beltane

What about deleting an attribute then retyping it rather than using undo? Maybe there's an odd invalid character that cannot be seen. – Bondage

Even if, instead of deleting anything, I add in a new attribute (like, say, BackColor="Green"), it lets me format again. I have no logical explanation for this. – Beltane

How very strange. I guess the only other thing I would wonder about would be coping just enough of the code into a new page (just the HTML, BODY table row and the one cell with the button) see if it still behaves that way... or just chalk it up to the odd bug it appears to be. – Bondage

Answer 1

There's probably some malformed markup somewhere in your document. Have you tried it on a fresh document?

Tautomerism

My markup wasn't malformed (as far as I can tell), but this put me on the right track to solve the problem. – Beltane

An extra " after an <a href tag was enough to cause this error for me. Fixed it by removing the offending " – Fetishist

Answer 2

Did get the problem today.

My solution: Restart Visual Studio

Rimarimas

I had success just closing the file in question and re-opening. – Aiello

Closing and reopening the file was the fix for me. – Doucette

The cause of it is confusion regarding brackets, quotation marks, weird characters etc. but my experience is that restarting VS is the fastest way to get rid of the problem. – Encomiast

No success for me, still complaining about the same line., the line being <a :href="'DownloadFile.aspx?file='+f.name">{{f.name}}</a> – Epicureanism

Answer 3

Usually this sort of behavior is caused by invalid code. It may only be invalid HTML causing it which would still allow the program to be compiled.

For example, if tags are mismatched like this the IDE cannot reformat it.

<div><h1>My Title</div></h1

Check your warnings to see if there are any entries pointing towards mismatched or unclosed tags.

Bondage

Answer 4

select the entire suspicious codes segments and use Ctrl+k,Ctrl+F to format only the selected segments instead of whole document .

this way you can find the exact place of problems specially not closed or inappropriate closed tags and fix them .

after all scanning segment by segment is done you can format the whole document for sure

Osteoporosis

Answer 5

For me, it's usually as issue with whitespace. To fix it, I open Find and Replace (CTRL+H), set Look in to "Current Document", check Use and select "Regular expressions". For Find what I enter ":b|\n" (minus quotes), and for Replace with I enter a single space. Then I click Replace All.

The steps above will replace all whitespace—including line breaks—with a single space, and the next time you format the document, you shouldn't get any errors. That is assuming you don't have malformed HTML.

Ascending

Except that if you have javascript with comments you lose your page. Careful with this.. – Melchizedek

Answer 6

My problem was an extra ". Look carefully the html.

Trilbi

Answer 7

I encountered this for the first time a few weeks ago. I found it was down to invalid HTML. I had to cut out sections of content and paste it back in a little at a time to track down the problem.

Xyloid

Answer 8

For me, I had some bogus characters in my markup code. I only found this out by copy and pasting all my text into Notepad. After that, I saw the bogus characters (showed up as little squares). I just deleted those lines and retyped them and now everything is ok.

Postlude

Answer 9

I had an unwanted semi-colon. But you may have quote ('), double quote ("), semi-colon (;) or any special character.

So, editing my answer with more details and a screenshot because it still very active.

Go to that line by double clicking the error and search for the extra (unwanted) quote ('), double quote ("), semi-colon (;) or any special character. Remove it because it is causing the error.

Mortarboard

Answer 10

Just to add some more information. This issue is caused due to some invalid markup in html. It won't cause any blocking while running the application.

Unfortunately the solutions mentioned here did not work for me. 1. Restarting visual studio 2. Replacing spaces using regex etc

The best solution to fix the issue is to go to the specific line where the issue is caused and check that line for any invalid symbols like , or ". Just remove it and it will work fine.

Otti

Answer 11

My issue is extra " in the value of html attribute, After removing this it is working fine for me.

Phantasmal