Can you export/import settings/tasks True Image 2016

Hello, John.
Acronis True Image 2016 offers no such functionality.

This is another example of serious missing functionality. Most products I'm familiar with have the capability of exporting settings and importing them into a newer version. And when doing an upgrade, the settings from the previously installed version are retained and updated along with the program.

This product should to the same.

Hi guys,

Any plans to bring this functionality back?

E.g. I'm reinstalling OS, how can I migrate my backup configuration?

Having created backup schemes for all my partitions I'm really annoyed to find I can't export/import my settings. If this feature was present in previous versions then why on earth has it been removed? With hindsight I wish I'd tried the trial version before buying, I assumed the new version would be an improvement.

Jayne J wrote:

With hindsight I wish I'd tried the trial version before buying, I assumed the new version would be an improvement.

I actually did try the trial version, but unfortunately I failed to look for this feature. I only realized it wasn't present after I'd purchased.

Stuff like this is why I frequently question whether I should continue to upgrade Acronis or instead look for another solution from another company. Immediately after  Acronis TI is set up the back up schedules seem to work well enough. But heaven help you if you should tinker with something in your existing set up because things may go wonky on you resulting in hours wasted trying to get back to where you were.

Acronis seems to be torn between trying to give their customers a good product and the fear of giving them too good a product without charging enough for it. I'm getting sick and tired of feeling like my data backup solution is a pawn to be herded by the whims of the marketing strategy of the moment. :(

Importing and Exporting is only one of many features that I found were missing or badly redesigned in ATI 2016. Let's just say that I was so dissatified with the new version that I am requesting a refund. I hope people complain loud and often about how these missing features are gutting what was once one of the best backup solutions on the market.

Before I went with ATI many years ago, I installed trials of many of the highly rated backup solutions and found most lacking in fundamental usability and features. For me ATI was the best, I don't think I can say that any more. I agree about being railroaded into accepting marketing's view of the world, especially this CLOUD (read fee) based models.

(Sorry if I hijacked this thread.)

Yes, the cloud backup is another reason I wonder if I should look elsewhere. I am not sure whom Acronis is trying to sell it to.  Their efforts seem so misdirected that I question how viable the company will be in the future.

There are already so many other usually less expensive options for those of us who want to save a copy of stuff in the cloud. And, in my case, all of these solutions have the same fundamental flaw. I just don't have enough upload bandwidth to backup more than a selected small subset of my data.  

I am currently using another company's cloud storage where (until they change it on me) I get 36 GiB for $5/year because I was an "early adopter".  The idea of paying much, much more to have the privilege of dedicating my limited upload bandwidth to moving my backups to another site is ... well, ludicrous doesn't begin to describe it for me. But I also digress ...

I am new to TrueImage; version 2016 is the first I have used. I am mostly happy with the product so far, but I am disappointed to see that there is no way to import/export my backup settings.

this functionality was present in previous releases and it is outrageous that export / import of configuration is not supported ... how can you take away functionality?  I have historically recommended this product but can no longer as if you use it with more than 1 computer it is a brute force manual configuration for EACH computer .... crazy ...

Also the new 2016 user interface is horrific ...  The user interface is a huge step backwards in 2016.  VERY hard to navigate and not intuitive.

It is certainly not the only feature that was removed. Loss of features, things that just don't work, perfromance issues, and a list of other problems forced me to move to Macrium Reflect. Very glad I did.

I just spent a day reverting back to 2014. I'm shocked at how bad 2015/2016 are. Time to look at an alterative backup system, since it appears cloud backup is being pushed and no resources are being put on desktop and I have 2 terabytes of data to backup.

I agree with most of what has been said here. I have ATIH since many years, and I installed it on all my machines, in private and for the office. I also recommended it to dozens of people.

However, the "new" ATIH 2016 comes as a great disappointment. I had ATIH before and did not see any need to go for ATIH 2015 at the time. However, two years later, I thought it might be time for an upgrade. Also, I had some issues and thought they might come from ATIH 2014. However, it turned out to be a faulty (backup!) HDD.

My comments about ATIH 2016 are as follows:

• You may debate the user interface. It looks more "modern" than the ATIH 2014 interface I had before. It is more in the "Windows 10 style" than before. While I found the ATIH 2014 interface easier and with more comprehensive information, I learned to live with the ATIH 2016 interface.
• I definitely miss the function to consolidate backups. The explanation given by Acronis, why they dropped this function, is without any credibility. Perhaps, it was too slow (but they could have done something to improve it), and it was not used very often. But sometimes, Acronis split even full backups into parts (e.g. when you had to free up space on the backup HDD), and then, the consolidation was quite useful.
• Acronis Cloud storage of backups: this is probably the most useless thing I could imagine. First, there are already too many Clouds around. Why? They all want to access your information. Perhaps not the contents of your files, but definitely what you do and how you do, how many computers you connect to the Cloud, etc. Such information is regularly used for marketing (and other) purposes and is worth lots of money in the time of "big data". Second, I am in a country with relatively low internet speed and have plenty of data to backup. With the current internet speed, it would take probably more than 100 days to backup all my data of at least 3TB, and during this time, the internet could not be used for anything else. Hence, the Cloud storage might be suitable for some occasional users, but it is unsuitable for any serious backup storage.
• Due to relatively complex data, I need several backup definitions for partitions and for files. Also, as a good habit, I make two backups of all data. One is daily, and the other one weekly or bi-weekly. Consequently, there are quite a number of backup definitions. What if I accidentally delete them? What if I need to do a re-installation? Of course, I need a function to export and import the backup definitions! I can't find any reason why such a useful and necessary function was silently dropped.

Acronis ATIH is an example how good things can be made bad, just be following some "fashion" trends. There are certainly even more flaws and weaknesses. Today, ATIH might be a solution for some very simple backups ("entire computer") for simple needs of occasional private users. It is definitely "out" for serious backups that are required in serious home or semi-professional ("home office") applications.

If anyone asks me today whether or not to buy ATIH 2016, my answer is a clear "no". I might need to go back to ATIH 2014 or find a solution from a competitor of Acronis. I trust they already found the ATIH 2016 weaknesses and will benefit from the wrong decisions at Acronis. Too bad.

My recommendation for Acronis: come out with a new version or service pack that adds the dropped functions back and make your product as useful as it was before. Otherwise, you will lose plenty of (previously convinced) customers. Of course, the update needs to be free of charge for those who bought a license for the scrappy ATIH 2016.

UOB - a disappointed loyal customer

There is one very clear reason that Acronis (and many other software companies) is pushing Cloud backup and services. Monthly or yearly subcriptions charges. Period. A guarenteed revenue stream. No need to prove that their product is better to keep the customers. Just keep them locked into their solution.

this latest version is complete and utter crapware, tried to get my money back but they refused, cancelled my subscription- if they know what's good for them, heads will be rolling. Backup software is a dime a dozen, not a product line you can afford to screw up.

I purchased ATI 2016 to upgrade from ATI 2013.  I'd assumed a feature as useful as import/export of backup settings would OBVIOUSLY be maintained in new versions.  Fiinding out (too late) this is not the case is a major disappointment, and not worthy of Acronis.  Many hours are spent by users configuring their individual backup strategies, why the heck don't they value our work by allowing us to re-use our backup settings from prior versions?  I plan to keep using my 2013 version, unless they restore import/export backup settings in the 2016 version.  Removing such a necessary feature would seem to hurt ATI upgrade sales, no? 

Buying ATI 2016 was a waste of money, for that reason alone. 

B/S!! how am i supposed to reinstall the machine and use the backup (for which they are designed in first place! - reinstalls and crashes).. is it a toy product or what?

Maxima, please raise a new post in the forum for your specific issue and provide some more details so that we can try to assist you.

If you have an urgent recovery problem, then you are entitled to support from Acronis to help resolve this.

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In fact, ATI-2016, release 2 will migrate accounts. After several past upgrades, I have come to expect to re-enter my backup configuration. But this time, the new version picked up my old backup configuration near perfectly. The only thing I had to do was update my email login and password for the Notification option. 

The download was two steps. When I started the initial download from the Acronis website, I was asked if I wanted the newer version. The release notes showed that version 2 was released only a few weeks ago. I answered yes to the new version, and things have been smooth sailing since.  

Could you provide more detail about the "migration" you are referring to?

Did you export your settings to a file which you then backed up and later imported after doing a clean reinstall of Acronis TI 2016 on a new system? Or are you referring to something else?

there is no export settings functionality. this is the whole point

Sure; with ATIH-2013 I had one backup scheduled to take an image of three disks, and it  has quite a few custom settings.  In past upgrades, I would loose these old jobs in the new version. This time all I did was a new install of ATI-2016 (version 2) and the old job appeared in the new product. I didn't remove the old version before I installed the new version. That is, there is no need to export/import the old jobs if you are upgrading ATI on the same PC. 

I have no experience with version 1, so I don't know if this is a new feature in version 2. It is confusing because I downloaded the first version directly from Acronis, but when installing, it offered to upgrade to version 2 (yes/no). I thought version 2 would be posted for download.  

yes James. thank you. I saw your post :)

Whilst there is no direct method of exporting / importing your backup task configuration data, you can do this in an indirect way as follows:

Open C:\ProgramData\Acronis\TrueImageHome\ in Windows Explorer - this may be hidden on some systems - if so, go to the Folder option in the View pane and enable hidden files & folders).  Save a copy of the Database and Scripts folders to another location to restore back later if needed.

Note: In order to restore the above folders & contents, you must stop all Acronis Services & Programs else you will encounter locked files in the Database folder.

maxima wrote:

yes James. thank you. I saw your post :)

Maxima, sorry for the confusion. I was responding to Martz question, which seemed to be asking about my first post. The way the reply threads are organized is confusing (I am usually a lurker and clearly not experienced in posting :)

James, the solution you offer is not a viable option..

I looked into it. Acronis shows old archives. You can restore from them.. But you cannot reuse it effectively.. Because there are 2 major components in a backup (for me at least) - schedule and the file structure.. I wouldnt worry about the schedules but the file structure is very important.

Those backups Acronis picked up for the drive dont have either though. To "reuse" them you should click Reconfigure which wants you to select the file structure again... Which nullifies the feature for me altogether (also I believe the schedule is lost too)..

So although it looks like you got your old backups back.. But in reality you havent...

I stopped to use Acronis TI and am telling everyone whos interested not to use it.. end of story. no time to waste.

they had to call it TP instead = True Pain.

Acronis team,

any updates from your side?

Vitaliy, the current product does not offer any direct way to export / import settings as may have been available in some earlier versions.

I can only suggest that you submit Feedback to the Acronis developers with your comments on this requirement in the product - this can be done via the Feedback tool provided in the program GUI in the Help section.

Don't waste your time. This has been requested for a long time. They do not care. This is simply poor software. Do yourself a favor, try to get your money back and get Macrium Reflect... it actually works, without you having to make up backup a hobby...

I actually did that last week - tired of random corruptions in Acronis backups, backups that run so slow - I have to cancel, lack of support and a constant terror of what may happen when my C: drive fails

For the record - Acronis has been able to restore older versn of files when I've had to fall back

Surely I am not wasting my time on this any more. obviously these people are beyond help. I am not using Acronis since the machine upgrade (keeping it in case I need old backup to restore for another year)..

if someone has time on their hand to volunteer here for a free license of poor software, I dont.

Let the evolution run its course.. Weak species die.

I followed your instructions and they were of course awkward to impliment and I had to reboot in safe mode in order to copy the two folders you depicted to the current new version.  When I looked at the tasks, not one of them were marked for scheduled on the first tabe of options.  Thankfully most other information was there.  Acronis can do better than this.  There are so many Imaging programs available now.  BTW this Cloud backup is little more than a joke and is down as I write this.  I dunno why I try and try wishing for a different result.

Gifford Tremblay

Steve Smith,

I did it more than half a year ago... Nobody even replied to me.

Basically I submitted at least 5 requests during 2015 (thru UI or contacting customer support), all of them were ignored.

Looks like it is time to look for alternative product to use...

I am so glad I used the Trial version of Acronis True Image 2016 first before buying it. No import/export of settings? This is a very important feature which is unmissiable for most of us, why would you remove this feature? Most other backup solution companies are trying to add more useful features but Acronis is keep removing useful features and not keeping up with rapidly changing technology.

Also why it would never show the remaining backup time? I have tried this on several laptops and desktops with different operarting systems but yet it would not show the remaining time, it shows only "Calculating time remaining" . The backup does complete though.

The only thing I do like about ATI is the backup speed (to local drives).

thanks.

Having that feature missing is just supremely dumb.

Sadly the entire industry around backup tools seems to be gravitating towards a point of maximum stupidity, with vendors desperately trying to produce unintuitive and ultimately useless tools. Acronis are leading in that regard, with every release being just that little bit worse than the previous.

Agree!
 

Hello All,

We hear your voice and bringing back import/export functionality is in change requests list. Even though current Acronis True Image 2017 Beta does not have this feature, it may appear in one of the next builds. Final decision whether to include it or not has not been taken yet.

Regards,

Slava

Steve Smith wrote:

Whilst there is no direct method of exporting / importing your backup task configuration data, you can do this in an indirect way as follows:

Open C:\ProgramData\Acronis\TrueImageHome\ in Windows Explorer - this may be hidden on some systems - if so, go to the Folder option in the View pane and enable hidden files & folders).  Save a copy of the Database and Scripts folders to another location to restore back later if needed.

Note: In order to restore the above folders & contents, you must stop all Acronis Services & Programs else you will encounter locked files in the Database folder.

I tried this method to get a clean install of the lastest verzion.  After saving the two sub fulders as you suggested, I booted up into safe made and was able to overwrite the two subfolders.  All of my tasks were there but none were in a sceduled mode.  That meant I had to go through each one to get it as before.

Gifford Tremblay

Slava wrote:

Hello All,

We hear your voice and bringing back import/export functionality is in change requests list. Even though current Acronis True Image 2017 Beta does not have this feature, it may appear in one of the next builds. Final decision whether to include it or not has not been taken yet.

Regards,

Slava

Now here we are waiting for the next version and the next version does not even include what the users want.  What does a user think when a brand new version comes out and you got one gripe that you had before?  Acronis, please listen to your customers and remember you have much competition out there.

Gifford Tremblay

I can't think of a single reason why such an obviously useful feature  should have been removed in the first place, and not to bring it back defies logic.

However even if it is included in ATI 2017 I have no intention of forking out for a new version just for that. If acronis really cared about what existing users want they would include import/export settings in an update for 2016. 

@Acronis Team,
I am really interested to know and to understand why you have removed this feature from ATI? Please explain.

Looking forward to your reply.

thank you

regards,

Hello,

i also interested in such an function.

I am waiting for next update for 2016.

@Acronis Team

When can we expect the update?

Regards

Hello All,

We will not see ability to export/import tasks neither in the release version of Acronis True Image 2017 nor in Acronis True Image 2016.

This feature was removed in 2015 version due to changes in internal database format: 2014 and earlier versinons stored it in XML, while 2015, 2016 and 2017 use SQLite for that. Statistics showed that export/import settings was very rarely used, and it was considered unnecessary to upgrade it to be used with SQLite format.

Nevertheless, the ticket for bringing it back is not closed and is awaiting time when we could implement it in some future version.

Regards,

Slava

I switched to Macrium Reflect over 7 months ago and am VERY glad I did. Not only does it have all the key features, like this one and log views within the program just to name two, that have been removed from or are lacking in ATI (and are continuously asked for by ATI users) but the MR support and development teams are VERY responsive to their user community!

Dear All,

I get here for the same reason - missing export/import feature of backup jobs in ATI.

I found a reasonable workaround to bring back the backup jobs after a fresh install of ATI (tested only with version 2017 - but 2015/16 might work as well)

1. Browse to the location of the (old) archives

2. Right-click on the *.tib file - if you have multiple files for the same backup job pick the newest one - and select validate.

3. Validation will take a while, but you'll get two things at the end (it will appear in the ATI interface):

A. - The ability to restore from the validated archives (different restore points will be listed)

B. The most important - the backup jobs are back 

4. Sure some adjustments (rename of the backup job, set again the schedule) of the jobs are still required, but at least the continuity is there - I mean I will not need to start over the whole process creating full backups, just 'attach' to the old ones.

If you need more detailed explanation, please send me a PM and I will try to assist you.

Al, welcome to these user forums.

You can also simply use the option to 'Add existing backup' to add your existing .TIB file(s) to the list of tasks instead of needing to do a full validation process.  When you do this you will still need to 'Reconfigure' the backup settings and set any schedule requirements.  Alternatively, see the advice in post #37 for saving the contents of the C:\ProgramData\Acronis\TrueImageHome\Scripts folder which holds the task configuration data in XML data format files (.tib.tis) that you can restore back then just reset any schedules.

I just don't understand why we have to make all kinds of weird efforts trying to trick Acronis True Image so it brings back the export/import function for the backup definitions.

It would be a piece of cake for Acronis to integrate this function again, and I really don't understand their reluctance. They have made much bigger efforts for much less important things (e.g. Acronis Cloud, new look, etc.). I have been a customer for plenty of years and have been using Acronis True Image on several computers at home as well as in the office. Furthermore, I promoted the software in our company - with the result that the software was purchased for a large number of computers. Also, in our commercial/business organization I introduced Acronis True Image, again with the result that Acronis could sell a good number of licenses.

After my efforts and promotion for the software, I am more than disappointed that - despite all the current requests - this function is still considered "unimportant" by Acronis. I simply don't buy the argument of Slava (Support Analyst of Acronis, post #42 above) at all that the export/import function was rarely used. I don't know which statistics he is refering to. Most of the more frequent users will have turned off the "report home" function, and then the so-called statistics might be seriously distorted.

If this small thing cannot be solved by Acronis now with one of the next few updates of True Image 2017, I also will need to consider alternatives. Then, I will definitely recommend my company and the commercial/business organization to change as well. A company like Acronis with so little interest to satisfy customer's needs seems to be no trustworth partner.

Actually the missing export/import function is not the only nuissance of the current version. This version automatically searches the whole computer for existing backups. In my case, there are plenty of them (on several disks), which I want to keep, but they don't need any regular update. Unfortunately, I could not find any option to turn this automatic search off. In past versions, this was possible. Now, I got an endless list of other backups, which I tried to manually delete - to no avail. They are back the next time you start the program. So, please Acronis, add also a button to turn off such automatic search of existing backups. A manual search and adding the existing backup back to the list is much more user-friendly and efficient.

I hope that Acronis' ears won't be deaf for much longer. Otherwise, we really need to "vote with our feet".

UOB wrote:

 Furthermore, I promoted the software in our company - with the result that the software was purchased for a large number of computers. Also, in our commercial/business organization I introduced Acronis True Image, again with the result that Acronis could sell a good number of licenses.

UOB, Acronis True Image Home 2017 (or any previous version) is aimed at the Home User market, not intended for commercial/business use when considering the core functionality.  Acronis has a range of Business products that are addressed to that commercial/business market.

This is a User Forum where the majority of the people responding to the topics posted here are exactly that, Users of the Home product, this includes myself and the other MVP's too.  We have no direct means of influencing Acronis Development or Design though we do try to point out the limitations of the product when we have opportunity to do so, which is mainly through the private MVP Forums and occasional conference calls we get invited to.

I would encourage you and all other users who want these types of features to be reintroduced / returned to the products to use the Feedback tool (found in the ATIH GUI Help area) or via the Web Feedback page or send Private Messages (PM's) to any of the few actual Acronis employees that you see visiting the forums.

Hello all,

Both requested features (export\import of backup settings and a UI option to configure search for backups) are documented in our internal system, all feedbacks are also logged to these tickets and passed to the product team. Based on the user feedbacks our product team is considering implementing borh of them in the next major release, however there is no confirmed feature list for the next version yet. 

I've heard the same several years ago. Nothing has changed.

Two years and haven't seen anything change. Should I buy this product?