Copy Chat Settings

Guides UI and Macro
1

Can someone please tell me how to copy chat settings from one character to another? Copying the WTF contents no longer works.

I really don’t want to have to redo all my custom window positions and chat colors and I really did not want to have to use an addon :frowning:

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2

Copying the:
[x:]\World of Warcraft\_retail_\WTF\Account\[your account]\[character realm]\[charcter]\chat-cache.txt

From one character to another should work.

Make sure you are copying from/to the _retail_ path (the location of WTF has moved under this folder).

Make sure you are completely out of the game when you copy/paste (rename/save the old file as well).

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3

It doesn’t work anymore - that would be the issue :frowning:

It hasn’t worked since they changed the folders to add the retail folder. It won’t even save the system settings when you adjust them on the new character in game (I keep having to redo my sound settings when I relog)

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4

Works on my machine.

If it’s not saving settings made in-game then that would point to a bigger problem and might require a UI reset.

5

Copying the WTF folder worked for the last character I made a few months ago, before the patch that changed the folders. I have tried multiple times, with multiple ways (ie copy/overwrite individual files, copy text and paste into existing file for char, copy entire folder). I have also compared the text in those files to the ones for character I am trying to copy from - they match exactly. Since they match this has to be something going on with how the settings are being save server side. It’s as if adding the retail folder has prevented locally saved settings from being read.

6

I’ve tried with the Cvars:
synchronizeChatFrames, synchronizeSettings and synchronizeConfig

both on and off. In all cases (just loading then exiting, no settings changed), the game updated the file time stamp of chat-cache.txt after exiting.

It might be worth checking.

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7

Yeah I tried that too and it shows it “updating” but it doesn’t seem to actually be doing anything (the files still match) and isn’t showing a change in game. It’s very frustrating.

Thanks for trying to help :slight_smile:

8

Not saving settings made in-game would still point to it being local issue with your installation of the game. If it were a global problem the universe would have known all about it long before now.

9

If you’re having difficulty with ANY files not saving correctly, I would check to see what malware protection you have.

Virtually all of it except Bit Defender puts soft locks on your files (opens them for shared write and then flushes any changes unless you explicitly set up access to those files by the apps you want to have access to them).

In the old forums there must have been 20 threads about this and every single one I got involved with, this was the problem.

In particularly, Malware Bytes is especially troublesome to WoW, but the Norton and McAfee and Avast products are also quite disruptive to the game if not very carefully set up.

3 Likes
10

Tried turning everything off - nada

Thanks for the suggestion though

11

Turning them off won’t do it.

What you’ll have to do is turn them off, then copy the files out, then delete the directory, then copy the files back in.

That’s what it takes to release the “soft locks” involved (if that’s the issue).

That data is stored in the file metadata, not in anything to do with the security application.

Copying out the files and deleting the old ones and then copying them back in resets that metadata.

Sorry, I should have mentioned that. I got busy today and didn’t check back and I kind of short-changed you on the resolution. My mistake.

2 Likes
12

I shall try that as soon as I can, keeping my fingers crossed that it works.

Thanks much for the help :slight_smile:

The really frustrating thing is that just copying the files from one character to another worked fine a few months ago when I made my demon hunter and now it doesn’t work at all.

1 Like
13

Hey thanks for posting this, I was looking to do exactly this and copying the file over the new characters chat-cache worked perfectly! I did this with _classic instead of _retail though.

14

I know this is really old, but I thought I’d leave what worked for me for anyone else having this problem.

What I did was:

  1. Close the game and Battle.net completely.
  2. Delete my old character folder _retail_/WTF/Account/<accountName>/<realm>/<character> .
  3. Copied the character folder that I wanted to use and renamed it to the character I just deleted.
  4. Change ownership and permissions on all files and sub-folders of the folder that you just created so that you do not have permission to write into or modify them.
  5. Start WoW manually through the exe in <prefix>/World of Warcraft/_retail_/Wow.exe .
  6. Log in and load into the character; macros and chat layout should be intact.
  7. Before logging out, change permissions back to what they were before.
  8. Exit and start the Battle.net launcher again.

After this, your copied settings should persist. I’m not sure why, but there seems to be some kind of backup of the character settings someplace I can’t find that overwrites the files if you don’t lock their permissions down, but if you can prevent them from being overwritten during character load, you can write the new contents to it when exiting the game.

Good luck to any others with this issue!

5 Likes
15

For anyone else searching, all this advice for tampering with permissions and anti virus are not necessary. I start a new character, I want the setup to be exactly like my main.

You need 2 macros.
“Sync On”

/run SetCVar(‘synchronizeBindings’, 1)
/run SetCVar(‘synchronizeChatFrames’, 1)
/run SetCVar(‘synchronizeConfig’, 1)
/run SetCVar(‘synchronizeMacros’, 1)
/run SetCVar(‘synchronizeSettings’, 1)

And “Sync Off”

/run SetCVar(‘synchronizeBindings’, 0)
/run SetCVar(‘synchronizeChatFrames’, 0)
/run SetCVar(‘synchronizeConfig’, 0)
/run SetCVar(‘synchronizeMacros’, 0)
/run SetCVar(‘synchronizeSettings’, 0)

These SetCVar commands in the macros simply dictate if the relevant data is going to be synced to server and using that copy (the numbered 1), or your local one (numbered 0)

(you can edit the macros if you want just specific things like only chat or only bindings)

  1. Log in (any character)
  2. Use macro “Sync Off”
  3. Log out
  4. Copy files from main’s folder to new alt’s folder
  5. Log in to new alt and view the changes

If you want WoW to return to syncing for you…

  1. Use macro “Sync On”

Done. No anti virus settings, no faffing about with permissions, no logging into WoW manually with the exe. You can do this logging in with the launcher, and without quitting WoW after every step. Just log on character, log off character.

If you need to go through a bunch of alts at once then follow to step 6, log out, start from step 1. It is important that you log out after “Sync On” to save changes server side, then log back in to “Sync Off” from Step 2.

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16

You’ve got smartquotes all through out your code because you’re using quote tags rather than wrapping them in code tags ```

17

Hi.

Can you suggest the fix?
I tried changing the quotes, run it, i get no error, but it still syncs from server and overwrites my local files.

/run SetCVar(synchronizeBindings, 0)
/run SetCVar(synchronizeChatFrames, 0)
/run SetCVar(synchronizeConfig, 0)
/run SetCVar(synchronizeMacros, 0)
/run SetCVar(synchronizeSettings, 0)

18 
/run SetCVar("synchronizeBindings", 0) SetCVar("synchronizeChatFrames", 0) SetCVar("synchronizeConfig", 0) SetCVar("synchronizeMacros", 0) SetCVar("synchronizeSettings", 0)

I haven’t checked the names are correct so…

4 Likes
19

AMAZING!! That did it!

20

Using the CVar macros didn’t work for me. Running TBC Classic.
Here’s what I did to get it to save my chat settings.

  1. Log each of the alts.
  2. Edit chat settings (e.g. deselecting LookingForGroup because it is just spam)
  3. Log out.
  4. Open “chat-cache.txt” from my main’s folder and copy the contents.
  5. Open “chat-cache.txt” from my alt’s folder and paste the contents.
    (repeat step 5 for all alts)
  6. Log the alt and see the chat is identical to the main!
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