Build succeeds, but publish fails

open projectname.csproj file in notepad and remove obj\debug\project name.csprojResolveAsseblyReference.cache line

Just rename Packages folder of Nugets. Visual Studio would automatically get required packages and build would get successful and Publish would work too.

I removed bin & obj folder and also the content of the inetpub/wwwroot/myapp and problem solve

I recently faced the same issue.
And I actually traced it by searching the file which was missing.

Reason for the error : In visual studio I had included the file and later on deleted it from file system.(but not from visual studio). VS had still had the reference to that file. So once I deleted the reference from VS I was able to publish successfully !

nothings work for me.
deleting obj and bin file-clean-changing webservice name-shorten webservice name.

But at all,

+Expand your Reference.svcmap from visual studio.

+Update reference.

+And delete *yellow warning* datasources.

works for me

In case this helps anyone, for my MVC project in VS 2015 it was this file:
File System.pubxml.user
In the publish profile directory, including it caused compilation errors but deleting it enabled it to publish!

I had to delete the publish profile, commit, and then recreate the publish profile from scratch.

I deleted all the existing publish profiles in visual studio -> solution explorer -> My Project Node -> Properties -> Publish Profiles
The same can be done by right clicking Project in solution explorer -> Publish -> Profile tab -> Manage Profiles -> Remove all profiles
Now download the relevant profile from Azure or choose from your directory if it's already save on your machine and choose it.
Then clean and rebuild the project.
Make sure you've chosen the project is built in Release mode and you've also chosen "Release" Publish -> Settings -> Configuration
Now Publish, it worked for me.

i have also faced this issue while i was publishing my site, in my case reference was added but in bin folder it was not there so please install again which reference is missing on output.i hope it helps

Exclude the bin (and/or) obj folder from project and publish.
This worked for me