Know-nothing beginner question

I have no app to develop. I just want to try to build a simple installer to install about 3,000 plain text files inside their folders into a single folder in an installed app’s directory structure so they appear in the app for use. Plus a couple of CSV files, and a few PDFs to go on the Desktop.

The platform is Windows 7 or later. I prefer if possible to make this in Windows 10 inside Parallels Desktop on a MacBook Pro running Mojave 10.14.6. But I also have a PC running W8.1 available.

Everything I’ve looked at so far is complete overkill for this. But I need to do it because the tech support load from ZIP downloaders who know nothing about their PCs except how to get on Facebook and YouTube is killing me.

However, I’m kinda in the same boat. When it comes to building, to quote the “Fawlty Towers” character Manuel, “I know nothing.”

Innosetup? This is what I use for installing applications, it can do recursive directories so I don’t see why it would not work, albeit I have not tried it without an executable file. Innosetup It’s also free and has support for deflating zip files so the user would just click an installation file.

Thank you, Paul. I’ll take a look at this.