Enable intellisense in Visual Studio for SharePoint / WSS xml files

To create xml files for SharePoint can be a bit awkward when you don’t have intellisense. Enabling that will make it a lot easier and faster to create Features etc.

Enable it by opening the “Properties Window” for your XML file, by opening the XML file and clicking anywhere inside it. XML document properties will now be listed in your lower right corner. Click inside the “Schemas” field and click “…”. Click “Add” and navigate to “wss.xsd” which is located here:

“C:\Program Files\Common Files\microsoft shared\Web Server Extensions\12\TEMPLATE\XML\wss.xsd”. click “Open”, and finally click “Ok”. Intellisense is not enabled, and can help with list definitions, list instances. feature.xml, elements.xml etc.

For easier access you can also copy the wss.xsd file to the schemas folder in your Visual Studio folder.

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9\Xml\Schemas ( or “Microsoft Visual Studio 8″ for VS2005).

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3. Fast generation of Guid in Visual Studio (2005 and 2008)
4. Visual Studio 2008 text file encoding problems
5. Add an Event Handler (Feature Receiver) to a SharePoint Feature