Failed to start project The directory name is invalid

Question

I'm new and learning SSIS, and just to get started I wanted to test funtionality by writing an excel document out to a .csv file. However, I did everything that I believe needs to be done, but when I try to run it, I get this error:

Failed to start project (Microsoft Visual Studio) The directory name is invalid (Microsoft.DataTransformationServices.VsIntegration)

I've run over it about as many ways as I can, and even went as far as reinstalling, but I still can't get it to work. Looking up this error doesn't return much to me, either.

Thanks for any help!

Answer 1

First result on Google says this is a DLL error.

From this answer:

1. Open the Developer Command Prompt for VS212 as Administrator

2. Execute the command cd C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\Common7\IDE\PrivateAssemblies

3. Execute the command gacutil /if Microsoft.SqlServer.Dts.Design.dll

4. Restart Visual Studio

Answer 2

There are some SSDT assemblies missing, I think that you have to reinstall or to repair the Sql Server Data Tools, you can find the latest versions on the following link:

• https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/ssdt/download-sql-server-data-tools-ssdt

Answer 3

I had exactly the same problem. I had Visual Studio 2017 installed and standalone SSDT tools installed as well.

The latest version of SQL server installed on my machine was SQL server 2014.

Thus, I changed the project properties of the integration services project.

General -> Deployment target version -> TargetServerVersion

from SQL Server 2017 to SQL Server 2014

and it worked finally for me.

Answer 4

I know it's being a long time since question was posted but I just had the same error and the fix was as follow:

In the SSIS Project properties I had to change two configurations:

1. Target SQL server ( from 2017 to 2016 )
2. Run in 64-bit mode ( from true to false )

After that everything start working.