Setup Project for ClickOnce C# app targetting .net 4.8

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Setup Project for ClickOnce C# app targetting .net 4.8

Lorne Johnson 0

Added the "Setup Project" to my ClickOnce .net 4.8 c# app. It does not have publish as an output that I can select. Is there a different installer project I can use to make an installer that reads the ClickOnce published files?

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Michael Taylor 59,026

ClickOnce is a setup project. So it doesn't really make sense to have a setup program for a ClickOnce app. A ClickOnce app, when run the first time on a machine, will install (or try) the required components. As such all you need to do is host the EXE somewhere and that is the setup that gets run.

Is there a reason you need a wrapper around the ClickOnce-published app? If you need to add pre-reqs then that is part of the publish options. Right click your EXE project and select Publish. Under the Settings section is Prerequisites where you can specify dependencies, such as NET 4.8, that must be installed in addition to your app.

Lorne Johnson 0 Reputation points

2025-05-09T21:31:04.43+00:00

Thanks for responding Michael. I need to be able to install to all user profiles in windows 11 PCs. The installer created by ClickOnce does not give the option of "all users". All my searching points to "new" Windows 11 default options being the issue for ClickOnce not supporting "all users" and Setup project needing .net 5 or higher for the published output to be an option. Application uses Crystal reports which doesn't work in .net 5 or above. Best solution is to find a way to create an installer that installs a c# app targeting net 4.8 into all profiles in a windows 11 pc. Do you know how I can do this?
Lorne Johnson 0 Reputation points

2025-05-09T21:33:12.6133333+00:00

Thanks for responding Michael. I need to be able to install to all user profiles in windows 11 PCs. The installer created by ClickOnce does not give the option of "all users". All my searching points to "new" Windows 11 default options being the issue for ClickOnce not supporting "all users" and Setup project needing .net 5 or higher for the published output to be an option. Application uses Crystal reports which doesn't work in .net 5 or above. Best solution is to find a way to create an installer that installs a c# app targeting net 4.8 into all profiles in a windows 11 pc. Do you know how I can do this?
Michael Taylor 59,026 Reputation points

2025-05-09T21:37:31.31+00:00

ClickOnce is, by design, per user. It always has been. ClickOnce doesn't require admin privileges because each user installs it for their own use. Hence you cannot use ClickOnce to install for all users.

If you need to be able to install for all users then you have to use a regular setup program. ClickOnce is not an option here. Installing for all users requires admin privileges as it impacts all users on the machine.

While there are several different installer options available the free approach is to install the Visual Studio Installer Projects extension in VS. You can then define a standard installer program, with pre-requisites. You point the installer project to your EXE as the program to install, configure your pre-reqs and any customizations and then build the project as you would anything else. The output is a setup program that can be run by an admin to install for all users.

If you don't like that option then there is WiX, InstallShield, InstallAnywhere and other installers that you can look into. They are not all free though.
Lorne Johnson 0 Reputation points

2025-05-09T22:18:35.13+00:00

Thanks agin Michael. I have added "Setup Project" to my VS 2019 App and created an installer. In net 4.7.2 is does not give me the option of selecting the published output from my VS 2019 app as the input into Setup Project. I upgraded the app (on a different PC) to .net 8 and it does in that version. If I use the files created by the build process (bin\Release folder) I can't access seem to access the current version of the app and all my crystal reports get a "report failed to load" error. Not sure how to get all the required files into the bin\Release folder.
Michael Taylor 59,026 Reputation points

2025-05-09T23:47:58.4266667+00:00

Publishing your EXE isn't going to help with the setup project. Setup projects don't use publishing as publishing is just bundling your stuff up, effectively. To get everything to work you'd need to add your EXE project to the installer's list of files to install using the Add Project Output option. For content files, like CR reports, you need to add them to the Contents Files section. This will add them as data files that will then be part of the setup and copied to the installation directory. Here's some more information on how to add files to the setup project.

I'd need to see the structure of your project, how you've configured your setup project and what is getting installed to try to figure out what is going on beyond that.

Note that if you are using CR then the CR runtime needs to be installed as well, or at least it used to. Check the docs for CR to see if you need to either include a CR redistributable with your setup to ensure it installs or whether any NuGet packages you rely on include all the necessary functionality.

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Setup Project for ClickOnce C# app targetting .net 4.8

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