InstEd

InstEd is a free editor for Windows Installer databases: MSI packages, MST transforms and MSM merge modules. It works like Microsoft's Orca table editor, but adds many features aimed at packaging professionals, such as tabbed multi-file editing, clickable relationships between tables, cascaded edits, validation profiles and cabinet building. InstEd is freeware from TNE Enterprises; it is not open source. The last version, 1.5.15.26, was released in April 2012, and the program is no longer developed or supported, although the author still offers the download on the original website, which has moved to GitHub Pages. An optional commercial plugin, InstEd Plus, added a System Viewer, smart field editors and a File Manager; it was sold with a 30-day trial and has not been available for years.

Features

• Tabbed interface built from the ground up for editing several MSI, MST and MSM files at the same time; searching and validation can be applied to more than one file at once.

InstEd speeds up MSI and MST editing with tabbed multi-file work, clickable table relationships, cascaded updates and batch validation.

• Full relationship mapping between all rows, including formatted fields that reference components, files, properties and directories.

• All relationships within the database are displayed and clickable, so you can jump from a field to the row it references and back again.

• Broken relationships are highlighted, with a full explanation of what is wrong.

• Cascaded updates: renaming a referenced row, for example a directory or a component, can optionally update every row and formatted field that points to it.

• Cascaded deletion: deleting a parent row, such as a component, can optionally remove everything that belongs to that component.

• Smart field editors with auto-completion where suitable, a menu-based editor for bit flag fields and tooltips that show the exact meaning of flag values.

• Built-in GUID generator for component codes and other GUID fields.

• Validation profiles that apply ICEs from more than one CUB file to many packages at once, for easy quality assurance of whole batches of files.

• Validation results can be sorted, hidden and copied, and InstEd automatically navigates to the field that a result refers to.

• Command line validation, so packages can be checked from scripts and build processes.

• Ships with CUB validation files from the Windows SDK, including the Windows 7, .NET 4 and Windows 8 Consumer Preview SDKs.

• Change highlighting: every change that an MST transform makes to the tables is highlighted.

• MSI differencing: two packages can be compared to highlight the differences, and comparing a package with itself while you edit it gives simple change tracking.

• Transform chaining: apply and unapply several transforms to see at a glance the cumulative changes that a sequence of transforms makes.

• Single fields or whole tables can be reverted, both in transforms and in compared (diffed) packages.

• Binary fields are hashed when packages are compared, so changed binary data is detected as well as changed text.

• The Transform, Generate against command quickly creates an MST from the differences between the open file and a base MSI.

• Build and rebuild cabinet files from the Media table; right-clicking a Media table entry shows the files that belong to that cab.

• Merge modules into an MSI with automatic fix-up of the sequence tables, optionally extracting the cabs and files from the merge module while merging.

• Updates the File and MsiFileHash tables with the details of files located in the source tree.

• Imports registry files (.reg) and INI files into a component from the Components view, adding the Registry and IniFile tables automatically when they are missing.

• Find and Replace, including Replace All with regular expressions, on string fields and, where the result is valid, on integer fields.

• Rows can be copied and pasted between packages and from Excel, with an option to choose which key field is changed to prevent duplicates.

• Specific columns of the selected rows can be copied, keeping the displayed row and column order.

• Pasting rows with too few columns succeeds when the missing columns are nullable, which makes pasting from spreadsheets easier, and failed pastes report the line numbers of the errors.

• Deleting a CustomAction row also removes that action from the sequence tables.

• The number of selected rows is shown, and the context menu of a cell opens the Find dialog already filled in with that cell's value, table and column.

• The _Streams and _Storages tables are accessible, so merge module cabs and other embedded binary data can be reached and saved.

• The Directory table shows the expanded target folder, and the Component table has informational columns with the target and source paths.

• Empty tables can be hidden, and table cells can be browsed with Back and Forward navigation using the keyboard or the browsing buttons of a mouse.

• A schema editor for adding custom or predefined tables and changing column definitions.

• Summary Information Stream editor, with F1 help that opens the matching Windows Installer SDK page.

• Configurable external tool commands that can receive the current file on their command line; transforms can be passed to external tools as MSI files, and the changes made by the tool are merged back into the original transform.

• Single-command backups of the current file from the File menu (Ctrl+B).

• Tools menu commands to install, administratively install and uninstall the open package and to view the installation log.

• A custom name can be set for the Last Saved By summary field, for example a company name instead of a user name.

• Context-sensitive F1 help integrated with the online Windows Installer SDK documentation.

• Sets the INSTED_VALIDATING_FILENAME environment variable during validation, so that QA CUB files can check the form of the package file name.

• DPI-aware interface with large edit boxes for long field values.

• A plugin interface with plugin command line handlers, used by the optional InstEd Plus module.

• InstEd Plus System Viewer: an overview of the file and registry changes on the target machine, which can be filtered by component, feature or feature with parents.

• InstEd Plus smart field editors: case-insensitive auto-completion, persistent bit flag editors, a Formatted field editor and a script editor with syntax highlighting.

• InstEd Plus File Manager: drag and drop files from Explorer into the installation, move files between cabinets and browse linked source and target directory trees.

• InstEd Plus can extract the files of a package into a new source tree and rebuild the cabs from the command line.

InstEd does not create installers from a wizard or a project file; it edits the tables of an existing package directly, which makes it a tool for administrators and packagers who customize, repair or validate MSI files. Because it has not been updated since 2012, its binaries are not digitally signed, and newer MSI editors are actively maintained, but InstEd remains a fast table editor that many packagers still use in place of Orca.