Visual studio 2013 Can't open a shared project

Question

Trying to send a copy of my project to a college but when they try to open it they get an error. I have only zipped up the file and even tried sharing it through a shared folder but still the same error.

Error

http ://localhost:1185 : error  : Error opening web ://localhost:1185. Unable to open the Web site 'http ://localhost:1185'.  The Web server '://localhost:1185' could not be found.

Tried following Bangla Gopal Surya Prakash's article on Code Project:

http://www.codeproject.com/Tips/290089/Error-Unable-to-open-the-Web-site-http-localhost-T

but still couldn't get it to work.

Edit

Any tips on how to improve the question?

Answer 1

Open the .csproj file in notepad, remove the IIS settings from the Project extensions section at the bottom of the file and save it. Now you can open it again in Visual Studio and reconfigure the web server settings from the Project Properties.

From a sample project, this is the content to remove:

<!-- remove from here -->
  <ProjectExtensions>
    <VisualStudio>
      <FlavorProperties GUID="{349c5851-65df-11da-9384-00065b846f21}">
        <WebProjectProperties>
          <UseIIS>True</UseIIS>
          <AutoAssignPort>True</AutoAssignPort>
          <DevelopmentServerPort>6446</DevelopmentServerPort>
          <DevelopmentServerVPath>/</DevelopmentServerVPath>
          <IISUrl>http://localhost:6446/</IISUrl>
          <NTLMAuthentication>False</NTLMAuthentication>
          <UseCustomServer>False</UseCustomServer>
          <CustomServerUrl>
          </CustomServerUrl>
          <SaveServerSettingsInUserFile>False</SaveServerSettingsInUserFile>
        </WebProjectProperties>
      </FlavorProperties>
    </VisualStudio>
  </ProjectExtensions>
<!-- remove to here -->