Question

This is very strange because as far as I can tell the method does return a value or null…I have ran it with null before and it worked…ever since I entered those 2 if statements inside the if statement, I am getting the error “not all code paths have a return value”

    if (dt.Rows.Count != 0)
    {

        if (dt.Rows[0]["ReportID"].ToString().Length > 40)
        {

        string ReportID = dt.Rows[0]["ReportID"].ToString().Substring(0, 36);
        string ReportIDNumtwo = dt.Rows[0]["ReportID"].ToString().Substring(36, 36);
        MyGlobals1.versionDisplayTesting = ReportID;
        MyGlobals1.secondversionDisplayTesting = ReportIDNumtwo;
        return ReportID;

        }

        else if (dt.Rows[0]["ReportID"].ToString().Length < 39)
        {
            string ReportID = dt.Rows[0]["ReportID"].ToString();
            MyGlobals1.versionDisplayTesting = ReportID;
            return ReportID;
         }
    }
    else
    {
        return null;
    }
}

Answer 1

if (dt.Rows.Count != 0)
{
    ...

    else if (dt.Rows[0]["ReportID"].ToString().Length < 39)
    {
        string ReportID = dt.Rows[0]["ReportID"].ToString();
        MyGlobals1.versionDisplayTesting = ReportID;
        return ReportID;
     }

    // it's possible to get here without returning anything
}
else
{
    return null;
}

So you should do something like this:

if (dt.Rows.Count != 0)
{
    ...

    else if (dt.Rows[0]["ReportID"].ToString().Length < 39)
    {
        string ReportID = dt.Rows[0]["ReportID"].ToString();
        MyGlobals1.versionDisplayTesting = ReportID;
        return ReportID;
     }
}

return null;