Visual Studio 2012 Installer Project in VS 2015 "The application is not installed" after installing Visual Studio Installer Projects in 2015

Question

I have an installer project I created using Visual 2012's built-in InstallShield Limited Edition Wizard.

I have a need to modify this project on a new computer. The source code was saved and obtained via Team Foundation Server.

So far, I've opened the solution in Visual Studio 2015, installed the Visual Studio Installer Projects Extension, and I'm still receiving the (incompatible) message along with the collapsed message "The application is not installed" for the installer project specifically. All other projects + project types compile, and run fine.

Any thoughts on what I'm missing?

Answer 1

The two are separate tools and require a separate installation of InstallShield LE in order to open the project, because this was an InstallShield project to start with. The Windows Installer extension is something separate.

This was happening because InstallShield wasn't installed. For my purposes, I was using InstallShield LE 2015 in both cases. To resolve, I installed InstallShield using method described below.

Choose items in the following order from the main menu in Visual Studio 2015:

1. File > New > Project
2. Other Project Types
3. Setup and Deployment
4. Enable InstallShield Limited Edition
5. OK
6. Download Now

This brings up a browser window where asking you to enter some details and the InstallShield website will provide a serial and installer.

The process above is described in MSDN.

After which, upon opening the solution with the project in question, should open with a prompt from InstallShield asking for activation. Choose appropriate response, and you will encounter a installer project with its structure similar, if not identical, to the structure in VS 2012.