How To Backup, Export & Import Seesmic Desktop Userlists

If you've already tried looking for the place where Seesmic stores the userlist information, and given up, you've probably realized that it is not in the same folders as the program files.

In Vista, which is the Operating System of the first computer I'm working with, I had to go to "Users" then "User_Vista" (my user name), and "AppData." In Windows XP, you would need to go to "Documents and Settings" before "Users" and instead of "AppData," it is actually "Application Data."

if you have a different operating system, check this entry about Transferring Settings between Computers - workaround at the Seesmic Help Desk.

If you are familiar with the AppData folder (Application Data in XP), then you probably know that it is normally a hidden file. If you cannot see it, go to the "Tool" menu, click on "File Options" then the "View" tab. Click "Show hidden files and folders" and you should be able to see the AppData folder.

In the AppData Folder, click on "Roaming" (XP will not have a Roaming folder), then look for a folder marked "com.seesmic.desktop.client" with a long string of numbers after it (the numbers are random).

Inside com.seesmic.desktop.client you should see "Local Store" and inside Local Store, click on "config." Now you are at the xmlAdapter.xml file.

Restoring it, or transferring it to another machine, a little bit tricky.

For me, I wanted to move it to my computer running XP, and I tried replacing it's copy of xmlAdapter.xml with this one, but that didn't work.

Even if you don't know what .xml stands for, you've probably seen the extension before. They are often used to share information between different kinds of computers and applications.

For as simple as it looks, I couldn't just swap the files, when I tried, Seesmic's icon appeared in the system tray, but the window wouldn't open. Instead I found that if I set up the same lists on the second computer, and added one name to each list, I could then copy all the information from between <members> and </members> in the first xmlAdapter.xml file under the name of each <userLists> and use it to replace the one entry for the corresponding userlist in the second file.

I didn't use anything fancy to do this, just OpenOffice Writer to edit the file. After saving the file, I rebooted before restarting Seesmic Desktop.

This worked for me. It seems a bit involved for the purpose of synchronizing a couple of computers on a regular basis, but for initially setting up a second computer, or rebuilding a deleted, or corrupted database, this seems worth the effort to me.

Update: When I tried to export my Userlists to my new laptop with Windows 7 64 bit OS, I wasn't sure if this still worked because I did not see an xmlAdapter.xml file. I decided to add my backup file to the "config" folder and restarted Seesmic Desktop.

I then saw an sqlite update file change xmlAdapter.xml to "xmlAdapter before update.xml" then update the userlists.sqlite with my backup information.

I'm leaving the information on how to edit the xmlAdapter.xml file, but if you are using a current version of Seesmic Desktop that uses the userlists.sqlite file, just replace the userlists.sqlite file (rename the existing one, just in case you need it later) or just add your xmlAdapter.xml to the folder and let Seesmic update the userlists.sqlite file for you.