Sometimes, it is necessary to copy all your MetaTrader chart settings to another PC or save them while you are reinstalling Windows on your current PC, or in cases when you are moving to a new broker and have to download their platform. That is not a problem if you keep only one or two charts open, but if you have more than 10 open charts and each of them employs some custom settings, it is a real pain to set them up on a new platform manually. It is easy to avoid doing such work by using the Profiles feature in MetaTrader platform. Here is a brief tutorial on how to move all your charts settings from one platform to another:
1. Save all your charts in your current platform as a new profile:
2. Give this profile some distinctive name:
3. Open the platform’s data folder via menu File->Open Data Folder:
Alternatively, you can navigate to the folder using Windows Explorer:
C:\Users\<windows_user_name>\AppData\Roaming\MetaQuotes\Terminal\<instance_id>\</instance_id></windows_user_name> |
4. Open the profiles folder:
5. Your saved profile is located as a separate subfolder inside profiles folder. Copy it to move your chart settings to another MetaTrader instance:
6. Open the new platform’s data folder via menu File->Open Data Folder:
7. Open the profiles folder of the new platform:
8. Paste your profile here:
9. Finally, load the saved profile by selecting it in the Profiles menu of your new platform (you will need to restart it for the profile to appear in the menu):
This is it! There is nothing difficult or
Update 2014-02-06: Updated directory information relevant for MT4 Build 600 and MT5 versions.
Update 2014-09-02: A short video demonstration of copying the charts profile from one MT5 instance to another:
Update 2016-05-13: Reworked the tutorial, making it more detailed and helpful by adding more images.
If you have any questions or comments regarding the process of moving the chart settings in MetaTrader, please feel free to share them using the commentary form below.
Thanks for the useful tip, I think many people can use this. It is always a pain to setup all of the charts when you change brokers and have to reinstall MT4.
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I don’t see my profile under the MT4 profile directory? can you please advise.
Thanks!
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Andrei Reply:
August 8th, 2010 at 10:00 pm
How do you check that?
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I want to copy the profiles from my usual to a new MT4 account but although thet are all listed in the existing MT4 platform they are not shown in the “Profiles” folder. The files must exist somewhere, but I can’t find them. Any suggestions?
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Andrei Reply:
August 11th, 2010 at 1:03 pm
1. There should be profile folders, not files, inside the “profiles” folder of your MT4.
2. Are you sure that you look in the “profiles” folder of your old MT4 installation, which already has some profiles? If you have several installations of MT4 it’s quite easy to confuse them.
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After more research, have found that this seems to be a Vista issue that does not let read/write files to be stored in the ProgramFiles folder. Instead they are stored separately in \AppData\local\VirtualStore! This applies to Profiles, Templates, etc
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Andrei Reply:
August 11th, 2010 at 1:35 pm
Wow! I didn’t know that Vista could mess with user’s files to such extent. Thanks for telling us that you’ve finally managed to find the profiles.
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Tha annoying thing is that these ‘virtual’ files are invisible in the search procedure!
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Thank you so much, been searching for those files forever!!!
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admin Reply:
October 30th, 2011 at 8:13 pm
No problem. I’m glad to be helpful to fellow traders.
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any idea where the files are stored on windows 7? i can’t find them anywhere.
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admin Reply:
February 14th, 2012 at 10:48 pm
In respective AppData folder.
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For Windows 7, which has different levels of security and users (Administrator, John (or your name), etc., the problem is that if you don’t open your MT4 platform as Administrator (right click, select ‘run as administrator’, everything that personilizes your setups is stored somewhere under your user name which isn’t obvious to find. Mine was under john\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files(x86)\yourForexBrokerRootFolder (FXCM, eToro, etc).
The way I did it was to copy my “yourForexBrokerRootFolder” from c:\Program Files (x86) to the next computer, then take the files from the folders in VirtualStore above and copy them into their respective c:\Program Files (x86)\yourForexBrokerRootFolder folders, one folder at a time, each file under each folder, replacing files already there if it seemed logical. I then started my MT4 on the next computer as Administrator, chose the Profile that I was using on the original computer, and everything worked on the next computer as it did on the original computer.
This has been bugging me for quite a while, and I’ve never found an explanation that was as ‘plug and play’ as I described above.
Good Luck!
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admin Reply:
February 17th, 2012 at 6:29 pm
Thanks for sharing! Yes, on Windows 7, personal files are stored quite differently.
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this is how i found it in Windows 7:
1. click the windows ball bottom left
2. type %appdata% in search box
3. up popped the folder appdata\roaming
4. go up to the top and you will see this path….now click the word appdata and it will show all folders under appdata
5. then i opened the local folder
6. in the local folder is the virtualstore folder
7. in the virtualstore folder is the programfiles folder and BINGO….all the mt4 folders!
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admin Reply:
May 9th, 2012 at 6:48 am
Thank you for sharing!
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DOJJI Reply:
October 18th, 2013 at 9:34 am
You guy, you are hot. Thank you a BIG BUNCH
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Andriy Moraru Reply:
October 18th, 2013 at 9:43 am
You are welcome!
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HI,
I have charts with EAs on them on one MT4, which I save in my Profiles folder. If I copy and paste this folder into another MT4 and load that profile, I get all the charts, but none of the charts has the EA on it. Quite a hassle putting EAs onto 32 charts!
Any ideas please why the EAs are not being copied with the profile?
Mike
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admin Reply:
May 30th, 2012 at 10:25 pm
Are you sure that those EAs are present within another MT4? You can also try using templates instead.
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Hi,
Thanks for your reply. I found the answer was to run both platforms (certainly the target MT4) in ‘administrator’ mode. Then all the EAs came with the profile. Isn’t W7 great!!
Mike
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Thanks Bro, Its very useful
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Thank you!Much apreciated!
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