I’m currently developing a SharePoint 2013 application. After a few deployments via Visual Studio, I was suddenly confronted with the error “Error occurred in deployment step ‘Install App for SharePoint’: The provided App differs from another App with the same version and product ID’”.

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According to Visual Studio the App didn’t need to be uninstalled. But once the App is uploaded, SharePoint figures out that there still is an instance of the App. A first visual inspection of the SharePoint Application site, indeed shows an empty application (test) gallery.

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After some further investigation, it turns out that the application is still visible via the “Site Content” overview. How nice, they even show a message that the app couldn’t be uninstalled! Luckily there is also a link to retry the uninstallation.

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By clicking the link “Click to retry”, SharePoint indeed initiates another uninstall.

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After some waiting the app is successfully removed and the deployment via Visual Studio works again as it should!