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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?

Andrew Mairose
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3 Answers3

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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.

CrazyCoder
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    For macOS Users the directory to remove is accordingly `~/Library/Preferences/IntelliJIdea2017.2` and the next restart will ask you again to import the settings from your previous IntelliJ installation. – ngeek Dec 04 '17 at 13:58
  • It looks like the naming pattern has since changed to `~/Library/Preferences/IdeaIC2019.1/`, but the rest remains the same. – Almog Apr 01 '19 at 22:47
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    @Almog it didn't change, it's just different for the Community and Ultimate versions as described in [this document](https://intellij-support.jetbrains.com/hc/articles/206544519). – CrazyCoder Apr 01 '19 at 23:38
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    Additionally, I have to delete the folder in `~/Library/Application Support/`. – aristotll Apr 04 '19 at 10:06
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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 https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/2020.1/tuning-the-ide.html#default-dirs

Samuel
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  • This was helpful, but even after importing from 2019.3, at least some of my keybindings have changed. This has been very frustrating. – Anj Apr 24 '20 at 12:21
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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.

DarkStar
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