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I am trying to deploy my first WPF, C# application to many desktops. For most records in the case database there is a large PDF which I want to store separate from the database and is displayed when a button is pressed (PDF filename equals the id number). It is a search only program, no data is being saved back to the database by users. There are approximately 32,000 pdfs and this number will grow. When I tried to list these files in the project and use ClickOnce to Deploy VS said I had exceeded the maximum manifest size.

Is there a way to deploy my app with ClickOnce and then copy the files with some type of post-install command? Thank you.

Lori Austin
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1 Answers1

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Add the files to your project. Mark the Build Action as Content and the Copy to local directory to Always. Then it will include the files with your deployment.

You can also check the Application Files dialog to see if they are there. And if the files have a file extension of XML or something that indicates data, you want to change the option from Include(Data) to Include or Include(Required). If you include a file as data, it is put in the DataDirectory after deployment.

  • Select a data file in Solution Explorer.
  • In the Properties window, change the Build Action property to the Content value

2. To mark files as data files

  • With a project selected in Solution Explorer, on the Project menu, click Properties.
  • Click the Publish tab.
  • Click the Application Files button to open the Application Files dialog box.
  • In the Application Files dialog box, select the file that you wish to mark as data.
  • In the Publish Status field, select Data File from the drop-down list.

3. To mark files as prerequisites

  • With a project selected in Solution Explorer, on the Project menu, click Properties.
  • Click the Publish tab.
  • Click the Application Files button to open the Application Files dialog box.
  • In the Application Files dialog box, select the application assembly (.dll file) that you wish to mark as a prerequisite. Note that your application must have a reference to the application assembly in order for it to appear in the list.
  • In the Publish Status field, select Prerequisite from the drop-down list.

Source: MSDN - How to: Specify Which Files Are Published by ClickOnce

Mohit S
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  • Have you ever done this with 32,000 files? I did try this, but it hung up VS for a long time and then there was a message about exceeding the maximum in my manifest which made me think it was just too many files to include this way. I wish this would work because it would certainly make life easy. – Lori Austin Dec 21 '15 at 02:03
  • I believe these instructions only apply to adding one file at a time. That's OK for a few files, but it becomes intractable for many files. There's no way to select multiple files in the "Publish / Application Files..." dialog and mark them all as "Data" (for instance). The only way to do it AFAIK is to edit the application project file in a text editor and explicitly generate the xml for the filenames you want to publish. Unfortunately, that won't help if you exceed manifest restrictions, but it DOES work if you want to add hundreds of files. – Angelo May 18 '16 at 20:34