The Upgrades Page

This page allows you to specify a list of products that will be removed from the target computer when your package will be installed.

Versioning

This section allows you to manage older versions of your package which were created with Advanced Installer.

Automatically upgrade older product versions

For this option to work, you must respect certain rules when Changing Version.

When upgrading older versions, the install location of the previous version will be used as default for the current installation process. This applies only if both versions are built with Advanced Installer 3.8 or greater.

Uninstalling a version installed as Administrator only works when the current user has Administrator rights as well.

In order to use this option to upgrade an older installation you can follow these steps:

• open the AIP (Advanced Installer Project file) you used to build the old package
• make sure that the "Automatically upgrade older product versions" option is set in the "Upgrades" page
• make the modifications you want to include in the upgraded package
• go to the "Product Details" page and increase the version of the package
• when you move from this page you are prompted about changing the Product Code
• answer "Yes" in order to change it (the old and new version of the package must have different Product Codes)
• build and install the AIP

If you run the upgraded package on a machine which has the old package installed, the old package will be removed automatically (and silently) and the upgraded package will be installed.

A per-user installation cannot upgrade a per-machine installation and a per-machine installation cannot upgrade a per-user installation.

Allow side by side installs of different product versions

Select this option in order to allow different versions of the same application to be installed on the same computer. For this option to work, you must respect some versioning rules when Changing Version. Also, you can follow these steps:

• open the AIP (Advanced Installer Project file) you used to build the old package
• make sure that the "Allow side by side installs of different product versions" option is set in the "Upgrades" page
• make the modifications you want to include in the upgraded package
• go to the "Product Details" page and increase the version of the package
• when you move from this page you are prompted about changing the Product Code
• answer "Yes" in order to change it (the old and new version of the package must have different Product Codes)
• build and install the AIP

You must build the older version of the product with this option enabled for the intended effect.

When authoring side by side installs of different versions of an application, it is recommended that some rules should be used. The install locations, registry entries, shortcuts etc. should differ from one version to another. If they are not different, the present items will be overwritten when a new version is installed. Also, they will be removed when a version of the application is uninstalled even if the other versions still uses them.

If the installation folder selected by the user is the same folder used for the installation of an older version then that version will be removed. The user can choose a previously used install location from the drop-down list in the "Select Location" dialog, forcing an upgrade.

Customize Advanced Installer upgrade rules

By enabling this option you will have access to the Advanced Installer custom upgrade rows. You can customize them to suit your needs but you are not allowed to delete them. When this option is unchecked these rows are reset to their original state.

Additional Upgrades

In this section you can specify other products that will be upgraded when your package will be installed. Note that these packages must be MSI-based, you cannot use this page to upgrade packages which don't use the Windows Installer technology. When you click the [ New... ] button Advanced Installer shows a dialog which allows you to select the target installation package from the disk.

Adding a new upgrade

Use the [ New... ] button, the "New..." context menu item or press the Insert key while the focus is in the list.

Editing an upgrade

Use the [ Edit... ] button, the "Edit..." context menu item or press the Space key while a list item is selected.

Removing an upgrade

Use the [ Remove ] button, the "Remove" context menu item or press the Delete key while a list item is selected.