title: Azure Website Exception: Format of the initialization string does not conform to specification starting at index 0
body: <p>I have an Azure Website that I use to host my MVC + Entity Framework project.  When I run the site locally using the same connection to my SQL Azure database, everything works perfectly, but when I deploy the site to my Azure Website, I get the following error:</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>Format of the initialization string does not conform to specification starting at index 0.</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>I followed the steps in <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9040266/how-to-fix-error-format-of-the-initialization-string-does-not-conform-to-speci">several</a> other posts and added the connection string to the thrown error and this is what the connection string comes out to be:</p>
  
  <pre><code>Server=tcp:abcde1fgh2.database.windows.net,1433;Database=SalesLeads;User ID=username_test@abcde1fgh2;Password=Password;Trusted_Connection=False;Encrypt=True;Connection Timeout=30;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>This string matches the connection string that is used locally.<br>
  Why would this work locally with the same string, but not remotely?</p>
  
  <h2>EDIT</h2>
  
  <p>Here is the full web.config for the site:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?&gt;
  &lt;!--
    For more information on how to configure your ASP.NET application, please visit
    http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=301880
    --&gt;
  &lt;configuration&gt;
    &lt;configSections&gt;
      &lt;section name="entityFramework" type="System.Data.Entity.Internal.ConfigFile.EntityFrameworkSection, EntityFramework, Version=6.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" requirePermission="false" /&gt;
  
    &lt;!-- For more information on Entity Framework configuration, visit http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=237468 --&gt;&lt;/configSections&gt;
    &lt;connectionStrings&gt;
      &lt;add name="DefaultConnection" connectionString="Server=tcp:abcde1fgh2.database.windows.net,1433;Database=SalesLeads;User ID=username_test@abcde1fgh2;Password=Password;Trusted_Connection=False;Encrypt=True;Connection Timeout=30;" providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" /&gt;
    &lt;/connectionStrings&gt;
    &lt;appSettings&gt;
      &lt;add key="webpages:Version" value="3.0.0.0" /&gt;
      &lt;add key="webpages:Enabled" value="false" /&gt;
      &lt;add key="ClientValidationEnabled" value="true" /&gt;
      &lt;add key="UnobtrusiveJavaScriptEnabled" value="true" /&gt;
    &lt;/appSettings&gt;
    &lt;system.web&gt;
      &lt;authentication mode="None" /&gt;
      &lt;compilation debug="true" targetFramework="4.5" /&gt;
      &lt;httpRuntime targetFramework="4.5" maxRequestLength="102400" /&gt;
    &lt;/system.web&gt;
    &lt;system.webServer&gt;
      &lt;modules&gt;
        &lt;remove name="FormsAuthentication" /&gt;
      &lt;/modules&gt;
      &lt;handlers&gt;
        &lt;remove name="ExtensionlessUrlHandler-Integrated-4.0" /&gt;
        &lt;remove name="OPTIONSVerbHandler" /&gt;
        &lt;remove name="TRACEVerbHandler" /&gt;
        &lt;add name="ExtensionlessUrlHandler-Integrated-4.0" path="*." verb="*" type="System.Web.Handlers.TransferRequestHandler" preCondition="integratedMode,runtimeVersionv4.0" /&gt;
      &lt;/handlers&gt;
    &lt;/system.webServer&gt;
    &lt;runtime&gt;
      &lt;assemblyBinding xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1"&gt;
        &lt;dependentAssembly&gt;
          &lt;assemblyIdentity name="Microsoft.Owin" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" /&gt;
          &lt;bindingRedirect oldVersion="0.0.0.0-3.0.0.0" newVersion="3.0.0.0" /&gt;
        &lt;/dependentAssembly&gt;
        &lt;dependentAssembly&gt;
          &lt;assemblyIdentity name="Newtonsoft.Json" culture="neutral" publicKeyToken="30ad4fe6b2a6aeed" /&gt;
          &lt;bindingRedirect oldVersion="0.0.0.0-6.0.0.0" newVersion="6.0.0.0" /&gt;
        &lt;/dependentAssembly&gt;
        &lt;dependentAssembly&gt;
          &lt;assemblyIdentity name="System.Web.Optimization" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" /&gt;
          &lt;bindingRedirect oldVersion="1.0.0.0-1.1.0.0" newVersion="1.1.0.0" /&gt;
        &lt;/dependentAssembly&gt;
        &lt;dependentAssembly&gt;
          &lt;assemblyIdentity name="WebGrease" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" /&gt;
          &lt;bindingRedirect oldVersion="0.0.0.0-1.5.2.14234" newVersion="1.5.2.14234" /&gt;
        &lt;/dependentAssembly&gt;
        &lt;dependentAssembly&gt;
          &lt;assemblyIdentity name="System.Web.Helpers" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" /&gt;
          &lt;bindingRedirect oldVersion="1.0.0.0-3.0.0.0" newVersion="3.0.0.0" /&gt;
        &lt;/dependentAssembly&gt;
        &lt;dependentAssembly&gt;
          &lt;assemblyIdentity name="System.Web.WebPages" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" /&gt;
          &lt;bindingRedirect oldVersion="1.0.0.0-3.0.0.0" newVersion="3.0.0.0" /&gt;
        &lt;/dependentAssembly&gt;
        &lt;dependentAssembly&gt;
          &lt;assemblyIdentity name="System.Web.Mvc" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" /&gt;
          &lt;bindingRedirect oldVersion="1.0.0.0-5.2.2.0" newVersion="5.2.2.0" /&gt;
        &lt;/dependentAssembly&gt;
        &lt;dependentAssembly&gt;
          &lt;assemblyIdentity name="System.Net.Http.Formatting" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" culture="neutral" /&gt;
          &lt;bindingRedirect oldVersion="0.0.0.0-5.2.2.0" newVersion="5.2.2.0" /&gt;
        &lt;/dependentAssembly&gt;
        &lt;dependentAssembly&gt;
          &lt;assemblyIdentity name="System.Web.Http" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" culture="neutral" /&gt;
          &lt;bindingRedirect oldVersion="0.0.0.0-5.2.2.0" newVersion="5.2.2.0" /&gt;
        &lt;/dependentAssembly&gt;
        &lt;dependentAssembly&gt;
          &lt;assemblyIdentity name="Antlr3.Runtime" publicKeyToken="eb42632606e9261f" culture="neutral" /&gt;
          &lt;bindingRedirect oldVersion="0.0.0.0-3.5.0.2" newVersion="3.5.0.2" /&gt;
        &lt;/dependentAssembly&gt;
        &lt;dependentAssembly&gt;
          &lt;assemblyIdentity name="Microsoft.Owin.Security" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" culture="neutral" /&gt;
          &lt;bindingRedirect oldVersion="0.0.0.0-3.0.0.0" newVersion="3.0.0.0" /&gt;
        &lt;/dependentAssembly&gt;
        &lt;dependentAssembly&gt;
          &lt;assemblyIdentity name="Microsoft.Owin.Security.OAuth" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" culture="neutral" /&gt;
          &lt;bindingRedirect oldVersion="0.0.0.0-3.0.0.0" newVersion="3.0.0.0" /&gt;
        &lt;/dependentAssembly&gt;
        &lt;dependentAssembly&gt;
          &lt;assemblyIdentity name="Microsoft.Owin.Security.Cookies" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" culture="neutral" /&gt;
          &lt;bindingRedirect oldVersion="0.0.0.0-3.0.0.0" newVersion="3.0.0.0" /&gt;
        &lt;/dependentAssembly&gt;
        &lt;dependentAssembly&gt;
          &lt;assemblyIdentity name="Microsoft.AspNet.SignalR.Core" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" culture="neutral" /&gt;
          &lt;bindingRedirect oldVersion="0.0.0.0-2.1.2.0" newVersion="2.1.2.0" /&gt;
        &lt;/dependentAssembly&gt;
      &lt;/assemblyBinding&gt;
    &lt;/runtime&gt;
    &lt;entityFramework&gt;
      &lt;defaultConnectionFactory type="System.Data.Entity.Infrastructure.LocalDbConnectionFactory, EntityFramework"&gt;
        &lt;parameters&gt;
          &lt;parameter value="v12.0" /&gt;
        &lt;/parameters&gt;
      &lt;/defaultConnectionFactory&gt;
      &lt;providers&gt;
        &lt;provider invariantName="System.Data.SqlClient" type="System.Data.Entity.SqlServer.SqlProviderServices, EntityFramework.SqlServer" /&gt;
      &lt;/providers&gt;
    &lt;/entityFramework&gt;
  &lt;/configuration&gt;
  </code></pre>