Visual Studio Installer

Installation Files

We will now add one more file before moving on to customizing the installation. First, create a new word document in your example VB projects folder, convert it to RTF format, and name it readme.rtf. Then, in VSI, click Project|Add File(s) and select the readme file.

Now that the file has been added, double click on the File System item in the Project Explorer. You can control from here where all the files and shortcuts in the project are installed.

Click on the Application Folder to see the files that will be copied to where your application is installed (ie C:Program FilesMyTestApp). You will notice that the example EXE program and the readme.rtf file has already been added here. If you want to add any further files, simply right click and select Add File(s)... Likewise, you can remove a file by right clicking on it and selecting Delete. To specify a default installation folder (for example, C:Program FilesMicrosoft Office), click Project|Properties... (at the bottom of the menu). You can then go to the Installation Folder tab and specify the default location (ie Program Files, Common Files etc), and the name of the folder (ie Microsoft Office). In this project properties dialog, you can also specify a company name, application name etc. When you have finished, click OK, and return to the File System window.

The File System area also allows you to control where shortcuts to your application are created, either on the Desktop or on the users Start Menu. If you click on User's Start Menu you will see that a shortcut has already been added to the example application. You can rename, delete or add another shortcut by right clicking. If you want a folder to be added to the start menu (usually when you have more than one shortcut to be created), simply right click, and choose Add Folder. You can then add the icons to there.

If there is another location where you want files to be installed other than in the Application Folder, you can right click, and select Add Special Folder. You can then choose from a large number of other locations such as the Windows directory and font folder. We won't use any of these for this installation.

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About the author

James Crowley

James Crowley United Kingdom

James first started this website when learning Visual Basic back in 1999 whilst studying his GCSEs. The site grew steadily over the years while being run as a hobby - to a regular monthly audien...

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