Installation tools for Excel (Excel 2000)

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I have a user who has developed a large and sophisticated financial tool from Excel. They want to have a more program-like feel and want to make it launchable from the Start menu. What kind of installation tool can I use to do this? The tool should:

1. let user select location to store the .xls file
2. add entry and icon to Start menu to launch the file
3. add a ‘read me’ and other such items to the same Start menu entry
4. provide an uninstall method

I haven’t used any of the usual install wizards but know that they typically are best for testing a user’s environment to see if certain .DLLs or other files are present as well as updating registry entries.

Is there some simple method to do this type of installation? I do have the Office Developer’s kit but haven’t used most of it (it does have an installation wizard tool included).

Thnx, Deb

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Edited by jscher2000 on 01-Jul-02 15:49.

They say when you have a hammer everything starts to look like a nail… I generally build my installers as Word documents. The doc body contains the instructions/help text, and the attached template on the server contains the code necessary to do the install. No special tools or packaging required! However, macro security must be Medium and the user must enable the macros, unless there is some other reason that a server-based template is trusted.

Alternatively, you can rename the installer DOT to a .doc, put the instructions in there, and have the users open it directly to avoid the problem of maintaining the server template path.

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I have been playing around with an installer called CreateInstall that is available as freeware. Get it from the creator at:

http://www.gentee.com/%5B/url%5D

I have used it to install a hidden macro file and a large (2.3mb) template with two toolbars attached to the hidden macro file. The finished installer was only 378kb!

It has proved great in being able to give users choices in where to install, etc. It also includes an Uninstaller which did the right thing when I tested it on my PC.

There are a number of versions of this available from the site, but I used the pre-release version that appears almost complete except for some Help files.

HTH, Leigh

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Now here http://www.createinstall.com/%5B/url%5D

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