Very often I see the answer to the question like: \"How should I store settings in my .NET app?\" is to edit the app.config file by manually adding entries to the app.config (or
Because the Settings file infrastructure is (1) more complex and (2) insufficiently documented given its complexity.
The way Settings files work by default are useful for small applications. For bigger ones you often need to change this default. The Settings file infrastructure could be leveraged to your needs, but there is a steep learning curve involved, even with good documentation. Without documentation, it's near to useless.
I just refer to this article to conclude. Feel free to paste some useful links to conceptual MSDN documentation to contradict my argument.
Update:
I need to be fair and supply a specific use case which I didn't find documented:
I like the application settings designer. I also like the XML format of the stored settings. I wanted to retain these features, but use other locations where to store the settings. I didn't find any hint whether this use case was supported, and if yes, how to accomplish the task.