Install files into ProgramData folder using Visual Studio Installer

visualstudio2017

Table of Contents

Last updated on March 30th, 2023 at 05:50 pm

Read Time:1 Minute, 17 Second

If you are a regular user of Visual Studio and you also use the Visual Studio Installer to create EXE and MSI installers for your programs then you sometimes may need to copy files to the ProgramData hidden folder.

Within Visual Studio Installer this option is not easily available to you like the User’s Desktop is for example:

Visual Studio
Click to enlarge

However, you can carry this out by using the Custom Folder special folder.

Instructions

When you have opened your Visual Studio Installer project you should right click on the File System on Target Machine:

Visual Studio
Click to enlarge

Then go ahead and click on the Custom Folder:

Visual Studio
Click to enlarge

This will then create Custom Folder #1:

Visual Studio
Click to enlarge

You should then go ahead and right click on the folder and click Rename:

Visual Studio
Click to enlarge

Then rename the folder to ProgramData:

Visual Studio
Click to enlarge

That is the folder structure part complete but you now need to change the folder properties to ensure that the DefaultLocation points to the correct folder as by default it points to [TARGETDIR]:

Visual Studio
Click to enlarge

You will need to change the DefaultLocation to:

[CommonAppDataFolder]

So it should then look like this:

Visual Studio
Click to enlarge

You can then go ahead and add files and folders to this folder and they will be installed into the ProgramData folder.

Comments

If you have any questions or feedback about this guide, please feel free to leave us a comment below and we will try to get back to you as soon as we can.

Click to rate this post!
[Total: 1 Average: 5]

Free Subscription

If you want to be notified when we post more quality guides like this one, sign up to our free subscription service and you will receive an email when a new post is live.

Join 441 other subscribers.

No need to worry, we will not be filling your inbox with spam and you can unsubscribe anytime you like.


2 thoughts on “Install files into ProgramData folder using Visual Studio Installer

Leave us a message...

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.