Runar Ovesen Hjerpbakk

Software Philosopher

Value was either too large or too small for a UInt32

While trying to check-in some code to TFS using Visual Studio 2012, I got the following message:

Value was either too large or too small for a UInt32.

The check-in did not continue and this message was all I was left with. In the history of poor error messages, this must rank pretty high.

Value was either too large or too small for a UInt32

As it turns out, the solution was very mundane. For some reason Visual Studio had decided not to save one of my newly edited files, thereby confusing the check-in dialog enough to make it throw this error.

After saving all my open files, the check-in completed successfully.

Developers should remember that error messages are useless if they:

  1. Do not give the user useful insight to what has gone wrong
  2. Do not suggest possible solutions

Sometimes software sucks.Value was either too large or too small for a uint32