Missing auto-generated Resources.Designer.cs file

If the Resources.Designer.cs file is missing and there is no Run Custom Tool option in the context menu for the Resources.cs file (or, of course, any other resources file), it probably means that the Custom Tool property of the Resources.cs file is empty:


This is what MSDN says about the Custom Tool property:

Custom tools are components that can be used to transform files from one type to another at design time. For example, a custom tool might be a dataset code generator that reads in an XML Schema (.xsd) file and generates classes in a code file that programmatically exposes its tables and columns. There is a predefined list of custom tools available in the product; this property enables you to see which custom tool is applied to a file. In rare circumstances, you might have to change the value of this property. The value of this property must be either blank or one of the built-in custom tools.

In case of Visual Studio 2008 the default tool generating the *.Designer.cs files is ResXFileCodeGenerator - type it in the property and the problem should be solved:


UPDATE:

I found an easier way to do it: