Today I tried to use SSMS to deploy a on prem database to SQL Azure.  I did this with Tasks->Deploy Database to Windows Azure SQL Database:

But at the end of the process I got this cryptic error:

It reads:

A project which specifies Microsoft Azure SQL Database v12 as the target platform cannot be published to Microsoft Azure SQL Database

The issue was that the database server in Azure I was targeting was not running the most up to date version of SQL Azure. 

It’s easy to find out if you are running V12 on the server by looking at the icon:

Or you can follow these instructions from https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/sql-database-v12-whats-new/

Another technique to ascertain the version is to run the SELECT @@version; statement in your database, and view the results similar to:

• 12.0.2000.10   (version V12)
• 11.0.9228.18   (version V11)

A V12 database can be hosted only on a V12 logical server. And a V12 server can host only V12 databases.

If you are not yet running on V12, you can upgrade your logical server by following the steps in Upgrade to SQL Database V12 in place.

Here you can see the server shows itself as “V2”.  Clicking on the V2 gives you the Settings window which allows you to select “Latest SQL Database Update”, and finally “Upgrade this server”.

After that, everything worked!