Using TagHelpers in Area Views

According to official docs:

The @addTagHelper directive makes Tag Helpers available to the view. In this case, the view file is Views/_ViewImports.cshtml, which by default is inherited by all view files in the Views folder and sub-directories; making Tag Helpers available. The code above uses the wildcard syntax (“*”) to specify that all Tag Helpers in the specified assembly (Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc.TagHelpers) will be available to every view file in the Views directory or sub-directory.

If you use one layout per area, to use built-in tag helpers you should add _ViewImports.cshtml in ~/Areas/Name/Views/ folder(If you use shared layout you don't need. See MusicStore project for shared layout example).

I guess you used one layout per area and you didn't add _ViewImports.cshtml ~/Areas/Name/Views/. Copy /Views/_ViewImports.cshtml into ~/Areas/Name/Views/.

As it turns out, adding the _ViewImports.cshtml file to the Areas/ folder cascades the visibility of the file to all Areas/{area}/views within the folder.

So rather than:

-> Areas
--> Area1
----> Views
------> _ViewImports.cshtml
--> Area2
----> Views
------> _ViewImports.cshtml

We can just do:

-> Areas
--> Area1
--> Area2
--> _ViewImports.cshtml

Or more visually