Settings Location and Transfering Settings

BC version 2 only

Transfering Settings

Beyond Compare stores user preferences, rules, and sessions.  These settings can be shared with multiple users and multiple machines.  In the Tools menu, choose Export Settings to save all desired settings as a file, and Import Settings to load them from a settings file.

Please note that the Beyond Compare license key is not included in the exported settings.

Default Settings Locations

User preferences (eg. Display settings, Keyboard shortcuts) are stored in the Registry under the key:

Rules and sessions are stored as Rules.bcru and Session.bcse in a "Scooter Software\Beyond Compare" subfolder of the Application Data folder.  The location of this folder depends on your version of Windows.  For instance, under Windows 2000/XP it would be:

Single-Folder Mode

You can force Beyond Compare to store all settings in the same folder as the program (by default, "C:\Program Files\Beyond Compare 2") by creating an empty file named BC2.ini in the program folder.  You can manually copy the rules and sessions files to the program folder.

Single-Folder Mode - XML

Note:  This feature is only present in BC 2.1 or greater

You can force Beyond Compare to store all settings as xml in Beyond Compare's program folder.  This allows all users of a computer to share the same settings.

To switch to this mode with fresh settings, create a blank text file named BC2.xml in Beyond Compare's program folder.

To switch to this mode with the settings of the current user, use the Tools > Export Settings command in the Folder Viewer and check Everything.  This will create a .zip file with the following files: Prefs.xml, Rules.xml, and Sessions.xml.  Copy the xml files to your Beyond Compare program folder and rename the Prefs.xml file to BC2.xml.