I fixed the issue by doing following modifications to the Project file. have VS 2012 and the web application was MVC 4

1. Unload the project and start editing the csproj file.

2. Added following lines.

<PropertyGroup>
    <VisualStudioVersion Condition="'$(VisualStudioVersion)' == ''">10.0</VisualStudioVersion>
    <VSToolsPath Condition="'$(VSToolsPath)' == ''">$(MSBuildExtensionsPath32)\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v$(VisualStudioVersion)</VSToolsPath>
 </PropertyGroup>

3. Added following lines.(Note that some of the Import statments may already exisits. In such case you do not need to add them.

 <Import Project="$(MSBuildBinPath)\Microsoft.CSharp.targets" />
  <Import Project="$(VSToolsPath)\WebApplications\Microsoft.WebApplication.targets" Condition="'$(VSToolsPath)' != ''" />
  <Import Project="$(MSBuildExtensionsPath32)\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v10.0\WebApplications\Microsoft.WebApplication.targets" Condition="false" />

Source : https://forums.asp.net/t/1838524.aspx?The+target+GatherAllFilesToPublish+does+not+exist

Answer by :  dilanh