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Change application name in Visual Studio 2017

I created a solution in Visual Studio by first downloading the workspace and then starting a project in Visual Studio from that folder. When I click build solution it says that Build succeeded. When I look in the Bin folder there is Debug and Release like normal. However there is nothing in the Release folder and inside the debug folder is ConsoleApplication .exe and .pdb.

So my question is: How can I change the name of my application?

Secondarily: Why is my Release folder empty? (This also happened when I followed along on the Visual Studio workshop as well.)

Rhett Herring
Rhett Herring
Courses Plus Student 11,023 Points

Hello, I think your Release folder is empty because you're building your project with the build configuration set to Debug. If you click Build from the top menu and go to configuration manager you can then set it to Release and your Release folder will get populated.

To change the name of your application right click on the project in the solution explorer and click properties. On the window that opens make sure the Application tab is selected... you will see an Assembly name box... you can change that and it will change the name of your exe file. There might be other ways to do this but this works for me.

1 Answer

Steven Parker
Steven Parker
231,236 Points

Do you want to rename the project, or just the output file?

You can right-click the project in the solution explorer and select "rename" to change the project name, or go to the Build tab of the program settings and set a different name for the output file.

A build is either in Debug or Release mode. There should be a box on the menu bar indicating the current selection, and clicking on it will present a drop-down where you can make another selection.