Application and deployment manifests in Office solutions
Applies to: 
Visual Studio 
Visual Studio for Mac
Note
This article applies to Visual Studio 2017. If you're looking for the latest Visual Studio documentation, see Visual Studio documentation. We recommend upgrading to the latest version of Visual Studio. Download it here
An application manifest is an XML file that provides information that is used by an Office solution to locate and update its assemblies. An application manifest can be used with a deployment manifest, which is an XML file stored on the server that provides the information needed to locate the most current version of the application manifest and assemblies.
Applies to: The information in this topic applies to document-level projects and VSTO Add-in projects. See Features available by Office application and project type.
Manifest structure for Office solutions
For Microsoft Office solutions created by using the Office development tools in Visual Studio, all manifests are based on the standard ClickOnce schema. When you deploy your Office solutions, the application manifests for both document-level and VSTO Add-in projects are located in the ClickOnce cache. The deployment manifests are not copied to the client computer.
For information about the contents of application and deployment manifests for Office projects, see Application manifests for Office solutions and Deployment manifests for Office solutions.
Create application and deployment manifests
Application manifests are created automatically as part of the build process. Every time you build a document-level project, the location of the deployment manifest is embedded in the document as a custom document property. For VSTO Add-ins, the location of the deployment manifest is stored in the registry.
For more information about the Publish Wizard, see Deploy an Office solution by using ClickOnce.
For more information about how manifests work with Office solutions, see Deploy an Office solution.