Outlook AddIn gives "AddIn element not found in XML" error on install

Question

I've created my first Outlook 2010 AddIn using VS 2012 but I'm having trouble creating a setup.exe.

I'm using clickOnce to publish the setup.exe files but when I try to install the AddIn, I get the same message as this guy - Error deploying VSTO Office addin

It turns out I cannot create MSI installer in VS2012 as written in the accepted SO answer because MS no longer supports it. Instead I am to use InstallShield to create the setup.exe. I tried that with the steps outlined in this video - http://resources.flexerasoftware.com/web/demos/IS2010_VSLE_Demo/IS2010_VSLE_Demo-lite.html

That failed too. For some reason it cannot find the .vsto file which doesn't seem to get created! The file path it looks for is also wrong even though I did specify in the registry "[TARGETDIR]… |vstolocal" per the instructions from an MSDN page.

Question: What do I need to do to fix either the clickOnce installer error or the InstallShield error?

I don't care which deployment method I use as long as: 1. it WORKS! 2. I can copy the setup.exe (w/ any necessary files) on to a USB stick and give a few people to test the Outlook AddIn.

Thanks.

Answer 1

Thanks to Andy_mic in MSDN Forum, here's the answer:

Follow ALL the steps, step by step, in the following link: Deploying an Office Solution by Using Windows Installer

I ran into a couple of problems:

1. I did not have the GUI Generator installed as a windows program. See this post for solution: Is Tools > Create GUID removed in Visual Studio 2012?
2. The value for the Manifest in the Registry data of the AddIn should be: "file:///[INSTALLDIR]ManifestFileName.vsto|vstolocal". In my case the manifest filename was ABCAddin_v1_0_0.vsto and so the value has to be "file:///[INSTALLDIR]ABCAddin_v1_0_0.vsto|vstolocal"
3. If you do not find the deployment and application manifest files in the "bin/release" folder, its because you need build a release version of the project first!