Install a ClickOnce application on an offline machine

Question

We have a ClickOnce-published application on our website.

Some of our customers have offline computers (not connected to the Internet) that they want to install the software to. What would be the solution?

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P.S. The software has lots of customers, and it's publicly available, so I guess I'm looking for a solution that, preferably, doesn't involve creating a custom build for the "offline" customers (it's our macro recorder actually)... Also, most of the customers have older versions of Windows, that has no file-association for the ".application" file-extension. But I guess that can be fixed by running the bootstrapper "setup.exe", right?

Answer 1

I think I figured the answer myself.

You just have to take the ".application" file along with the "Application Files" folder contents, ZIP it and send to the offline machine. Then extract (preserving the hierarchy) and launch the ".application" file.

Works fine, just tried on an offline virtual machine.

Answer 2

You can set ClickOnce to publish to your filesystem, suitable for deploying from a file share or CD.

Edit: if you don't want to have to change your publish settings for these customers, you can publish the app manually