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intellij-ideajarconfigurationsettingsconfiguration-files
Andrew Mairose
Andrew Mairose

Reputation: 10995

IntelliJ - Import configuration from old version after first run

I recently installed version 2017.2 of IntelliJ IDEA. I would like to keep my settings from my old 2017.1 version. IntelliJ's support site shows the following dialog box that is supposed to show up when you run the newly installed version for the first time.

Complete Installation Dialog

However, neither when I was installing the new version, nor when I ran the new version for the first time, was I ever shown this dialog box. I attempted to import settings from my old version via the File | Import Settings menu option, but it expects a .jar file that would have been exported from an old version by going to File | Export Settings, which I did not do in the old version before installing the new one.

I do still have all of the config from my old version in %MY_HOME_DIR%/.IntelliJIdea2017.1. How can I import those settings in the same way that the above dialog box would have done had it shown up when I opened the new version for the first time?

Upvotes: 56

Views: 23482

Answers (3)

Samuel
Samuel

Reputation: 5763

As of version 2020.1, Jetbrains has changed the directory where preferences are stored.

  • For Windows \%APPDATA%\JetBrains\<product><version>
  • For OSX: ~/Library/Application Support/JetBrains/<product><version>.
  • For Linux ~/.config/JetBrains/<product><version>

See JetBrains Docs

Upvotes: 6

DarkStar
DarkStar

Reputation: 595

I wasn't able to get this working either so what I did was rename the %APPDATA%\JetBrains\IdeaIC2023.1 folder (.bak) and then copied the old %APPDATA%\JetBrains\IdeaIC2022.3 folder to the new one. That could break things at times, but it has worked for me in this case.

Otherwise, I would move everything I could find to a temporary folder and work on cleaning out the JetBrains registry entries until a new install gave the prompt again. If anyone finds the as-of-2023.1 magic flag would love to know. But just removing %APPDATA%\JetBrains\IdeaIC2023.1 did not do it.

Upvotes: 0

CrazyCoder
CrazyCoder

Reputation: 402375

Starting with IntelliJ IDEA 2020.1 the settings are imported automatically from the most recently used previous version and the dialog is not shown.

To start with the default settings you can use File | Manage IDE Settings | Restore Default Settings.

Also note that default folders used by the IDE have also changed since 2020.1 release.

Original answer for older versions:

This dialog is displayed only when there is no existing directory for IDE configuration of this version.

In your case there is probably %MY_HOME_DIR%/.IntelliJIdea2017.2 directory already created if you were using EAP or RC builds before.

Removing IDE configuration directory will display this dialog again on the next start.

Upvotes: 106

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