app.config changes are not recognized unless they are made from the Project Settings window in Visual Studio

I store my application settings in a project settings file.

I notice that in addition to the Settings.settings file beneath the Properties folder in the Project, the settings are also stored in an app.config file.

My appl开发者_运维百科ication only recognizes changes to this file if I make changes via the Settings tab of the Project's Properties window.

If I accidentally made a change in the app.config file, I have to open the Settings.settings editor and have it recognize that a change had occurred. During development, this is somewhat annoying, but isn't much of an issue.

However, now I'm ready to deploy to test. My client requires that I install the same bits I put on dev, onto test; I can't recompile.

When I alter the settings of the app.config file, the my service does not pick up on those changes.

How can I force these changes to be recognized?

I trust that you are changing "applicationName.exe.config" in the deployed app. And you will have to restart the application after changing the configuration.