The Releases view provides a visual tool for managing separate releases for each product in your project. By organizing multiple releases under product configurations, you can create specific builds of products in a minimal amount of time.

Before building your package make sure that you have completed designing and setting the properties for every element in your project, including the features, components, files, shortcuts, registry entries, and the end-user interface.

The Releases view provides a visual tool for managing separate releases for each merge module in your project. By organizing multiple releases under product configurations, you can create specific builds of products on the fly.

Before building your package make sure that you have completed designing and setting the properties for every element in your module, including the components, files, shortcuts, and registry entries.

A release name must not contain any of the following characters:

\ / : * ? " < > |

A release name must not contain any of the following characters:

\ / : * ? " < > |

A release name must contain only letters, digits, underscores (_), and periods (.), and it must begin with a letter or an underscore.

## Install Windows Installer (Setup.exe)

By default, InstallShield creates an executable file that checks to see if the target system has the required version of Windows Installer. If Windows Installer is not found or if the version found is earlier than the version that you are distributing, Setup.exe installs the necessary version, and then runs your setup package.

You can turn this feature off in the Release Wizard and have it apply only to the current release.

For more information on Setup.exe, see Adding Windows Installer Redistributables to Projects.

## Launch the Release Wizard

To launch the Release Wizard and build your setup package, do one of the following:

- Click the Release Wizard button () on the toolbar.
- Right-click the Releases explorer and click Release Wizard.
- Right-click a release name and then click Release Wizard.

Follow the instructions in the Release Wizard's panels.

## Build a Release from the Command Line

Building a release from the command line can be useful if you build your product with a batch file. InstallShield gives you the option to build a release, build it in silent mode, output any messages to a log file, and compress the setup, all from the command line. For more information on building your release from the command line, see Building a Release from the Command Line.

## Rebuild a Release

You can rebuild a release at any time using the default entries you already provided in the Release Wizard. The release that currently has focus is rebuilt. To rebuild a release, do one of the following:

- Click the Build button () on the toolbar.
- On the Build menu, click Build Name of Release.
- Right-click on a release name in the Releases explorer and then click Build.

You can also run the Release Wizard again to rebuild a release. Since the wizard stores the release settings in your InstallShield project file, the wizard displays all of the options that you set when you last built the release, even if you deleted the actual release.

## Run the Built Installation

To run any of your built installations from within InstallShield, do one of the following:

- Click the Run button () on the toolbar.
- Right-click a release name in the Releases explorer and then click Run Setup.
- On the Build menu, click Run Name of Release.

InstallShield runs the release that currently has focus in the Releases view.