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Reusing Project Elements

InstallShield 2014

You can save several elements in your project to reuse in another project. In some cases, the data must be saved to an intermediary file and in others you can export it directly to another .ism file. The manner in which you can reuse each element is described below.

Entire Projects

By saving a project as an InstallShield project template, you can create a project from the template that is almost identical to the original project.

Registry Entries

When you export registry entries to a REG file, you can import that file into another component’s registry data in the same project or an entirely different one.

String Entries

You can export a project’s string entries for a specific language to a tab-delimited text file. Typically, you would send the text file out for translation and then import the string entries back into the project for another language. However, you could also add the exported string entries to another project by importing the file into the other project.

End-User Dialogs

You can save all of your dialogs to an .rc file, export them individually to InstallShield dialog template files, or export them directly to another project.

Components

To export a component to another project, right-click on the component and select Export Components Wizard. Follow through wizard and the component and all of its data are added to the specified project.

Custom Actions

You can export a custom action to another project by right-clicking on the custom action in the Custom Actions explorer and clicking Export. The Custom Actions explorer is in the Custom Actions and Sequences view (in Basic MSI, InstallScript MSI, MSI Database, and Transform projects) and the Custom Actions view (in DIM, Merge Module, and MSM Database projects).