Winphone project type is not supported in Visual studio 2017

Question

I have an existing xamarin native project and It has

• myproj.iOS

• myproj.Droid

• myproj.WinPhone

I uninstalled my visual studio 2015 and installed Visual studio 2017

Now in the solution explorer I can see it clearly says myproj.WinPhone (incompatible)

I am aware Microsoft is pushing for UWP but I still want to do as I was doing earlier like supporting windows 8.1 etc..

Is it possible to downgrade this to 2015 so that I can still do myproj.WinPhone ?

Or is there anyother way that will solve this problem

FYI:

I tried creating a new xamarin native project but that doesn't have winphone project but it has for iOS and Android though

Answer 1

See Visual Studio 2017 Platform Targeting and Compatibility

"Projects for Windows Store 8.1 and 8.0, and Windows Phone 8.1 and 8.0 are not supported in this release. To maintain these apps, continue to use Visual Studio 2015. To maintain Windows Phone 7.x projects, use Visual Studio 2012."

Answer 2

@Elstine,

Instead of going back to VS2015, I would recommend to reinstall the VS2017 with some WinPhone Dev kit. I remember, when I was installing VS2017, I un-selected few Win Phone component to save space as I do not need that.

Just check and it should be there in VS2017 installer.

Thanks