The publisher is determined by the certificate used to sign the application when deploying it. In order to have it not display "unknown publisher", you have three options that I can think of off the top of my head.

1) Purchase a signing certificate from someone like Verisign.
2) Create a signing certificate using makecert and install it on all of your customer's machines so they will recognize it. (I think that's the link Alan provided above.)
3) Have your enterprise people create a signing certificate. (I'd have to look up the details on that.)

The purpose of the "published by" is to give your customers the assurance that the application is installed by a trusted authority. When you purchase a signing certificate from someone like Verisign, they investigate and make sure you are who you say you are, and then issue you a certificate. When you sign your deployment with this, it shows you as the publisher, and the user knows it is you.

If just anyone could change the "published by", then anyone could change their app to be published by you and hijack your deployment and get your users to install it. So this is a security issue, and not one that you can circumvent. It's not just a setting that you provide somewhere that changes what is displayed on the screen.

RobinDotNet

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Hi Connor,

This link shows how to Add a Trusted Publisher to a Client Computer for ClickOnce Applications:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms172241.aspx.

Let me know if this helps.
Aland Li

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thats not what i wanted.

when you are going to install the application i want it to say how the publisher is.

The publisher is determined by the certificate used to sign the application when deploying it. In order to have it not display "unknown publisher", you have three options that I can think of off the top of my head.

1) Purchase a signing certificate from someone like Verisign.
2) Create a signing certificate using makecert and install it on all of your customer's machines so they will recognize it. (I think that's the link Alan provided above.)
3) Have your enterprise people create a signing certificate. (I'd have to look up the details on that.)

The purpose of the "published by" is to give your customers the assurance that the application is installed by a trusted authority. When you purchase a signing certificate from someone like Verisign, they investigate and make sure you are who you say you are, and then issue you a certificate. When you sign your deployment with this, it shows you as the publisher, and the user knows it is you.

If just anyone could change the "published by", then anyone could change their app to be published by you and hijack your deployment and get your users to install it. So this is a security issue, and not one that you can circumvent. It's not just a setting that you provide somewhere that changes what is displayed on the screen.

RobinDotNet

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Click here to visit my ClickOnce blog!