How to deploy an Office VSTO add-in using Visual Studio 2017
I created an Outlook add-in, debugged and works fine. I want to be able to package it for distribution. This is for a very limited audience of 5-10 people. What are the steps for this?
I tried Build | Post, which seems to work (using the local filename and CDROM install location options) but creates a massive 1.5MB setup.exe file and when it runs it goes on forever (seems to be trying to contact some remote server and time expires error although the add-in appears to be registered).
Online I found links to create a SetupProject or using the InstallShield Limited add-on, but none of these are applicable to Visual Studio 2017.
I'd be glad if I could just provide my DLL and .reg file - that's for a small set of 5-10 power users.
What's the easiest way to deploy this add-in?
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You can download the Visual Studio project project: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=VisualStudioProductTeam.MicrosoftVisualStudio2017InstallerProjects
This will allow you to deploy the package, but it is somewhat buggy in my opinion. Also, the link above does not contain any documentation. To do this, you need to go to another page and the answer is similar to the comments:
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ybshs20f(v=vs.90).aspx
However, ClickOnce worked more consistently for us. Just right click and choose Publish to Project.
This is a long way from the old InstallShield LE process, which allowed you to customize the entire process, including images, click-through licensing, etc.
But InstallShield LE had its own set of problems and it seems to have been completely abandoned.
It might be worth looking at other third party tools like WiX ( http://wixtoolset.org/ ) to get things set up correctly, or even manually writing your own installer so that everything is in place where it should be.
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