Android Action Bar Tutorial: R cannot be resolved as a variable

I am new to Android development and I am just working through the tutorials on the Android development website. ( http://ift.tt/1iLKhgk )

I'm currently working on the Action Bar tutorial having worked through the previous sections.

I have continued adding the action bar features to the app that had been built in the previous section. This had previously been working perfectly but after I added the .png for the search icon I cleaned the project and began getting the error that R cannot be resolved as a variable and an error executing aapt.exe (return code: -1073741819).

I'm aware that this issue has been brought up a lot but none of the solutions I've found seem to work. I'm sure I have done everything in the tutorial. I have done the stuff they don't explicitly mention in the tutorial. All of the strings I reference are in the strings.xml file and the .png is in the correct place in the res folder. I do not have import android.R at the top of my code. None of my resources use forbidden characters. I have cleaned and rebuilt the project more times than you can imagine. I have deleted and recreated the gen folder. I also know that the environment itself is not a problem as a simple Hello World app works just fine.

So, any help? I'm just completely baffled and new to this and the "R cannot be resolved" message is not incredibly instructive.

So here is my code:

MainActivty.java:

package com.example.myfirstapp;

import android.content.Intent;
import android.os.Bundle;
import android.support.v7.app.ActionBarActivity;
import android.view.Menu;
import android.view.MenuInflater;
import android.view.MenuItem;
import android.view.View;
import android.widget.EditText;


public class MainActivity extends ActionBarActivity {
    public final static String EXTRA_MESSAGE = "com.example.myfirstapp.MESSAGE";

    @Override
    protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);
    }


    @Override
    public boolean onCreateOptionsMenu(Menu menu) {
        // Inflate the menu; this adds items to the action bar if it is present.
        MenuInflater inflater = getMenuInflater();
        inflater.inflate(R.menu.main_activity_actions, menu);
        return super.onCreateOptionsMenu(menu);
    }

    @Override
    public boolean onOptionsItemSelected(MenuItem item) {
        switch (item.getItemId()) {
        case R.id.action_search:
            openSearch();
            return true;
        case R.id.action_settings:
            openSettings();
            return true;
        default:
            return super.onOptionsItemSelected(item);
        }
    }

    public void sendMessage (View view) {
        Intent intent = new Intent(this, DisplayMessageActivity.class);
        EditText editText = (EditText) findViewById(R.id.edit_message);
        String message = editText.getText().toString();
        intent.putExtra(EXTRA_MESSAGE, message);
        startActivity(intent);
    }

    public void openSearch()
    {
          //Do something here.
    } 
    public void openSettings()
    {
          //Do something here.
    } 

}

activity_main.xml:

<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://ift.tt/nIICcg"
    xmlns:tools="http://ift.tt/LrGmb4"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="match_parent"
    android:orientation="horizontal" >

    <EditText android:id="@+id/edit_message"
        android:layout_weight="1"
        android:layout_width="0dp"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:hint="@string/edit_message" />

    <Button
        android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:text="@string/button_send"
        android:onClick="sendMessage" />
</LinearLayout>

main_activity_actions.xml

<menu xmlns:android="http://ift.tt/nIICcg" >
    <!-- Search, should appear as action button -->
    <item android:id="@+id/action_search"
          android:icon="@drawable/ic_action_search"
          android:title="@string/action_search"
          android:showAsAction="ifRoom" />
    <!-- Settings, should always be in the overflow -->
    <item android:id="@+id/action_settings"
          android:title="@string/action_settings"
          android:showAsAction="never" />
</menu>

DisplayMessageActivity.java

package com.example.myfirstapp;

import android.content.Intent;
import android.os.Bundle;
import android.support.v7.app.ActionBarActivity;
import android.view.Menu;
import android.view.MenuItem;
import android.widget.TextView;

public class DisplayMessageActivity extends ActionBarActivity {

    @Override
    protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setContentView(R.layout.activity_display_message);
        Intent intent = getIntent();
        String message = intent.getStringExtra(MainActivity.EXTRA_MESSAGE);

        TextView textView = new TextView(this);
        textView.setTextSize(40);
        textView.setText(message);

        setContentView(textView);
    }

    @Override
    public boolean onCreateOptionsMenu(Menu menu) {
        // Inflate the menu; this adds items to the action bar if it is present.
        getMenuInflater().inflate(R.menu.display_message, menu);
        return true;
    }

    @Override
    public boolean onOptionsItemSelected(MenuItem item) {
        // Handle action bar item clicks here. The action bar will
        // automatically handle clicks on the Home/Up button, so long
        // as you specify a parent activity in AndroidManifest.xml.
        int id = item.getItemId();
        if (id == R.id.action_settings) {
            return true;
        }
        return super.onOptionsItemSelected(item);
    }
}

activity_display_message.xml

<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://ift.tt/nIICcg"
    xmlns:tools="http://ift.tt/LrGmb4"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="match_parent"
    android:paddingBottom="@dimen/activity_vertical_margin"
    android:paddingLeft="@dimen/activity_horizontal_margin"
    android:paddingRight="@dimen/activity_horizontal_margin"
    android:paddingTop="@dimen/activity_vertical_margin"
    tools:context="com.example.myfirstapp.DisplayMessageActivity" >

</RelativeLayout>

strings.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<resources>

    <string name="app_name">My First App</string>
    <string name="edit_message">Enter a message</string>
    <string name="button_send">Send</string>
    <string name="action_settings">Settings</string>
    <string name="title_activity_main">MainActivity</string>
    <string name="title_activity_display_message">My Message</string>
    <string name="hello_world">Hello world!</string>
    <string name="action_search">Search</string>
</resources>

Thanks, apologies if it turns out to be anything really stupid. I'm new to both xml and Java so I have been struggling with finding the issue here.