Visual Studio SignTool.exe Not Found

Publish Problem Overview

I have completed an application I have made in Visual Studio 14.0, but when I tried to publish the program, I get an error as Visual Studio cannot find 'SignTool.exe'. I have searched my Hard drive a few times for this but it is nowhere on my PC. Can anyone help me find it or download it?

Publish Solutions

Solution 1 - Publish

I had the same issue but installing the Windows 8.1 SDK as per Catquatwa's answer did not work for me (signtool.exe was still missing from C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\vX\Bin).

I stumbled across this solution: http://www.benedykt.net/2015/08/12/missing-signtool-exe-w-visual-studio-2015/

Basically, for VS 2015, this would be:

Open Programs and Features
Select "Microsoft Visual Studio 2015" and click "Change"
Press "Modify" to progress to Features options
Select "Windows and Web Development", then tick "ClickOnce Publishing Tools" for installation
Then "Next" and then "Update"

Solution 2 - Publish

I have a windows 7 and installing the ClickOnce Tools was not enough.

The signtool.exe appeared after also installing the sdk:

Solution 3 - Publish

If you do not care about sign your program when you publish, just right click your project then choose Properties --> Signing --> un-check Sign the ClickOnce manifest . I had the same issue when building my program on another machine which did not have ClickOne.

Solution 4 - Publish

The SignTool is available as part of the Windows SDK (which comes with Visual Studio Community 2015). Make sure to select the "ClickOnce Publishing Tools" from the feature list during the installation of Visual Studio 2015 to get the SignTool.

Once Visual Studio is installed you can run the signtool command from the Visual Studio Command Prompt. By default (on Windows 10) the SignTool will be installed at C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\bin\x86\signtool.exe.

ClickOnce Publishing Tools Installation:

SignTool Location:

Solution 5 - Publish

1.Just Disable signing from the properties of your project it will solve issue :)
2.The other method is to purchase the certificate for your product from Digicert or Comodo or any other you want. You can get some free certificates for One pc use.

Solution 6 - Publish

No Worries! I have found the solution! I just installed https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/desktop/bg162891.aspx and it all worked fine :)

Solution 7 - Publish

Windows Software Development Kit (SDK) for Windows 8.1

http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkId=323507

Right click on Project, select properties and Un-Check the sign on option in teh project save and re-built.

This has fixed issue for me.

Solution 8 - Publish

Here is a solution for Visual Studio 2017. The installer looks a littlebit different from the VS 2015 version and the name of the installation packages are different.

Content Type	Original Author	Original Content on Stackoverflow
Question	Catquatwa	View Question on Stackoverflow
Solution 1 - Publish	bhish	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 2 - Publish	S.Spieker	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 3 - Publish	Hua Trung	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 4 - Publish	Benny Neugebauer	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 5 - Publish	Ahmad	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 6 - Publish	Catquatwa	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 7 - Publish	BHUVANESH MOHANKUMAR	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 8 - Publish	thmspl	View Answer on Stackoverflow