Error occured in deployment step 'Activate Features': Unable to locate the workflow's association data. To restore the association data..

Hey Friends,

Have you ever faced an issue like below, while developing Sequential workflow for SharePoint 2013, using VS 2012. 

Be cool, solution is there

Reason for the issue:

I'll give some context on Workflows. Workflows were having several number of Tasks and actions to perform, upon ItemAdding and ItemUpdating. Workflow will update entries in Task List (created for each workflow by default) and History list will record the steps executed (History list also get created). So while creating the workflow through VS 2012, Association between Task List, History List and Workflow will be created automatically by VS 2012. This error will appear after you have tried to redeploy same workflow code to different site collection and if your workflow already undergone some processing tasks.

Fix for the issue:

Just select the Workflow node from the project and check the properties window. notice the parameter "Auto Associate" and make it "False"

That's it, Rebuild the project and try to deploy to the site collection. Error will vanish.

Good Luck!

References:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/exploring_technology_/archive/2011/10/19/error-occurred-in-deployment-step-activate-features-unable-to-locate-the-workflow-s-association-data.aspx

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms563325.aspx

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb417400.aspx