IntelliJ idea thinks that my project is external

Question

I am using elementary OS and I have installed and activated a copy of IntelliJ.

When I try to refactor and try to change the name of a file I get the following error. (Note the test.txt tab is brown indicating it's outside the project.)

Also note I have done an ls -la to show the .idea folder is in the directory.

Cannot perform refactoring. Selected folder is not located inside the project

Answer 1

The project configuration looks broken. You can try to do the following:

• Close the project. File | Close Project
• Close the IDE.
• Open the project directory in the OS file explorer and delete all .iml files and the .idea directory.
• Re-import the project into IntelliJ from Existing sources.