Missing dependencies from a solution in Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM

When importing a solution into your target environment you may be faced with the following error. 

‘There are missing dependencies.’ Install the following solutions before installing this one.’ 

This issue occurs as the solution you exported recognises there are dependencies to the attributes within the solution from the source environment.  

Personally, I like to, where the requirements allow, to keep my solutions as small as possible and only include the components I want to move. I have two reasons for this: 

1. It takes less time to export and import a solution with only a few components. 

1. Only exporting/importing the changes mean’s you have less chance of changing something that could potentially be different in production than it is in Sandbox. Now I know that should ‘never’ but experience has taught me otherwise (I’m sure we’ve all been there). 

So instead of adding all the missing dependencies to the solution, if you know they exist in the target environment it makes more sense to remove the reference to them. 

Let's get started. 

Find the zipped solution you exported from the source environment and ‘Extract All’ its contents.

Now within the zipped folder, open the solution.xml file. I use a free program called Code Writer to edit the file but other such as Notepad++ may support the same capability. 

Scroll down to ‘MissingDependencies’ and press the icon as displayed above in red. 

The screen should now look as above. 

Now delete the three dots after Dependencies and add a forward slash. 

Now save and close the file. 

Next copy the modified solution.xml back into the zipped up solution you first downloaded. 

Once you have overwritten the solution.xml file, go back to your target environment and reimport your modified solution.