Changing the Default Install Location of an MSI
A few months ago, I had to tweak an MSI installer. It was installing into a specific directory (named the same as the application) underneath Program Files. Since the location of Program Files can change from machine to machine, the MSI has a special token you can use for Program Files (as well as for the application name). So the current value for “DefaultLocation” of the Application Folder was:
[ProgramFilesFolder]\[ProductName]
During installation, these tokens would be replaced by the actual location based on the current machine.
I needed to change this to a specific folder underneath the users My Documents directory. I poked around the help file and I could not find where these special tokens (like “[ProgramFilesFolder]”) were defined. Obviously, there must be some specific set of values that are available and I’m sure My Documents is one of them.
I finally found them documented so I’m posting the link here. Hopefully, it will help someone else out. Not sure where I found this link…
For me, it was as easy as changing the DefaultLocation to:
[PersonalFolder]\MyToolName\Application