This is another quick reminder (mainly for myself) post that would have been helpful if I had made it the first time I had to solve the problem of uninstalling “invisible” ClickOnce applications.
One of my users just ran into the situation where
- The ClickOnce application was not in the “Add Remove programs” window
- The ClickOnce application was no longer in Outlook’s Trust Center Add-ins window (The application in question is an Outlook add-in)
- Trying to reinstall the application from the installation URL returned something to the effect of “The latest version of this customization is already installed”
To solve this we needed to remove the “invisible” ClickOnce application so I opted to try and use the uninstall string that I had heard of previously.
As per this stackoverflow question the uninstall string can be found in your registry in the HKEY_CURRENT_USERS\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\[random string associated with your app]\UninstallString value.
Since the application in question is an Outlook add-in the uninstall string looks something to the effect of:
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\VSTO\[Current Version]\VSTOInstaller.exe /Uninstall [Application Install URL]
For normal, non Outlook add-ins the string will look something like this:
rundll32.exe dfshim.dll,ShArpMaintain [Published application file], Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=[Application Token], processorArchitecture=msil