Publishing a WinForms app is a little screwy.

The wizard:

1. You are first asked "Where do you want to publish the application?" to which I recommend answering with the route to a shared folder.
2. You are next asked "How will users install the application?" to which I recommend responding by picking the "From a UNC path or file share" option and then reentering the route to the shared folder.
3. The last question is: "Will the application be available offline?" to which you should answer as you feel fit.

You should end up with a setup.exe which when first clicked will run a ClickOnce installer and in subsequent launches will launch the WinForms application itself! For me, a start menu shortcut was most recently placed at: C:\Users\tjaeschke\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Microsoft\ upon running a setup.exe. A lot of my dependencies seemed to end up at: C:\Users\tjaeschke\AppData\Local\Apps\2.0\T0PXHBYJ.DQY\71D72CJQ.WOB\work..tion_18ad13e67fc8a2c5_0001.0000_2da8119f5228e7d0

 
 

Addendum 8/28/2018: Picking the option for "From a CD-ROM or DVD-ROM" instead in the second step here is really pretty legit. It will allow you to make an installer without a network share. The third step in the wizard will then ask you if the app needs updates and you can just say no like Nancy Reagan. When I ran the installer it put a start menu shortcut at C:\Users\tjaeschk\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\YourNameHere and the .exe executable file itself (which I had to search for) at C:\Users\tjaeschk\AppData\Local\Apps\2.0\Z3ZPX5O6.YH6\5O3QA0VY.E6A\your..tion_5c47e637ef76de4f_0001.0000_1f3bdb73f5a87c19