Hey people, I've been coding in vb.net for a while but never had to publish anything (it didn't get covered during any of my classes) so here's my confusion:
Context:
My application uses an existing excel spreadsheet which it then modifies per user input, and saves the modified version to the user's MyDocs folder.
Issue:
During development that .xls file sat in my project folder, and was accessed w/o error. When I publish the app, how do I ensure that it still has access to the file?

What I think I need is a dynamic file path to the spreadsheet, so that during development I can access it while its in my project folder, and after deployment I can be sure that the app can still find it once it's installed into the Program Files folder.

Thanks for reading. Any Suggestions?

hello .. how about storing the file as an array of bytes in the application resources and then generate the file on start up if it doesn't already exist ?

If My.Computer.FileSystem.FileExists("file.xls") Then
            My.Computer.FileSystem.WriteAllBytes("file.xls", My.Resources.xlsfile, False)
        End If

project properties> resources> add resource> add existing file> browse the xls file and name the byte array resource to xlsfile for example.

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