RadForm is Not Recognized in Solution Explorer

Updated on Sep 16, 2025

Environment

Product Version	Product	Author
2021.3.914	RadForm for WinForms	Desislava Yordanova

Description

Sometimes, when a RadForm is added, it does not show up as a design component in Visual Studio. It just looks like a partial class. It is not possible to select it and open the designer and double clicking on it does not open the form designer:

Solution

Usually, the issue is caused by some settings applied to Visual Studio and it may not be reproducible on a fresh installation and then get reproducible when the developer logs in to the Microsoft account and settings synced.

The problem is that when a new form is added the SubType is not set as Form, so the designer does not recognize it as such. The solution is to manually edit the .vbproj/.csproj file and add <SubType>Form</SubType> to the Form and Designer files. For example:

XML

    <Compile Include="RadForm1.vb">
      <SubType>Form</SubType>
    </Compile>
    <Compile Include="RadForm1.Designer.vb">
      <DependentUpon>RadForm1.vb</DependentUpon>
      <SubType>Form</SubType>
    </Compile>
    <Compile Include="RadForm2.Designer.vb">
      <DependentUpon>RadForm2.vb</DependentUpon>
    </Compile>
    <Compile Include="RadForm2.vb" />
    <EmbeddedResource Include="RadForm1.resx">
      <DependentUpon>RadForm1.vb</DependentUpon>
    </EmbeddedResource>

In the case above RadForm2 and RadForm2.Designer files should get the Forms SubType like their RadForm1 counterparts.