How do I create a single exe file to distribute a C# application?

Question

I have finished a c# Add-In application for outlook. And I want to create a single exe file for distribution. I have been on Add-in Express but I am not looking for a ClickOnce, ClickTwice or web based solution. At the moment i have a created a setup.exe but that file depends on an .msi file in order to run. Can someone teach me how to create a single exe file? Thank you very much.

Are you sure msi file is not everything you need? In many occasions setup.exe can be ignored. — Alex, Mar 04 '16 at 21:14
@Alex the MSI file works just fine, however i would like to have an extension of EXE as we are all accustomed of installing and running exe files. — Jim, Mar 07 '16 at 14:32
@ScottChamberlain I am going to check that post out right now and we will let you know if it helped or not. — Jim, Mar 07 '16 at 14:32
@ScottChamberlain Yes thank you I saw those instructions and are following them, everything seems to be going smoothly. I will update you on how it goes! — Jim, Mar 07 '16 at 14:44
I converted my comment to an answer and deleted my old comments, you can delete your comments too if you like. — Scott Chamberlain, Mar 07 '16 at 14:48

score 2 · Answer 1 · edited Mar 20 '17 at 10:18

If you want to package the setup.exe and .msi file in to a single distributable .exe file a common easy solution is create a Self Extracting Zip Archive that unzips the .msi and the setup.exe to a temporary directory then runs the setup.exe. See this SuperUser.com post for instructions to do it totally free using only 7-Zip¹.

^{1: The "SFX modules" are not part of the normal download and instead are found in the LZMA SDK download.}

How do I create a single exe file to distribute a C# application?

1 Answers1