Advice on Moving FM to A Different Laptop?

[Weston]

Anyone have any advice on moving my FM save to a different computer?

I have an old personal laptop, and a new work laptop. I put FM on my work laptop this year, but now I have to give it back. I have a time machine backup of the work laptop, but I want to move just FM from the hard drive to my old personal laptop - I won't be entering the time machine because I'm not trying to copy over everything. So I want the game, my save, and all the edits/updates I made to the game to transfer over. What is the best way to do this?

Do I download FM19 from steam on the old personal computer, and then just copy / paste the entire Sports Interactive folder from Documents over? In addition to the saves themselves I also downloaded and installed a lot of graphics, etc. Please excuse my ignorance, any guidance is appreciated!

[Rashidi]

You could just sync your documents folder to a cloud service like Dropbox.

Or you could use steam cloud for the save, just save the graphics to an external drive and the port then over to the new machine.

[a.panda]

Aside from the usual SI folder from Documents, it'd be worth copying the hall of fame file (somewhere in a "public" folder in the file system), and any custom .lnc files in the data/db/ folder under Program Files folder tree (if you do, e.g. league name fix and else)

[Hovis Dexter]

I've done this a few times. I:

- download Steam to the new computer;

- install FM from within Steam;

- copy the FM19 directory from the original PC to the new PC. You only need to copy those directories that are not created during the installation of FM plus the contents of the "editor data" directory if you have a edited data base.

You are then set to go ... start the game, do not create a new profile, but load your latest save game. You will have to reset your general game preferences.

 

[sportsfan67016]

2 hours ago, Hovis Dexter said:

I've done this a few times. I:

- download Steam to the new computer;

- install FM from within Steam;

- copy the FM19 directory from the original PC to the new PC. You only need to copy those directories that are not created during the installation of FM plus the contents of the "editor data" directory if you have a edited data base.

You are then set to go ... start the game, do not create a new profile, but load your latest save game. You will have to reset your general game preferences.

 

You say "Copy the FM19 directory from the original PC to the new PC and that You only need to copy those directories that are not created during the installation of FM". Im not really sure which directories you're referring to. Just to clarify do you mean that if I have copied the entire Sportsinteractive folder from my  Documents folder onto a USB flash drive (I back up my entire Documents folder including the entire Sportsinteractive folder this way on a weekly basis) do you just copy the entire Sportsinteractive folder from the flash drive and paste it directly onto the Sportsinteractive folder (overwriting it) that the new FM2019 installation has just created in the Documents folder on your new PC? Or will that overwrite something that shouldn't be overwritten? PS I don't use edited Databases or use any other type of editors that make changes to the way the game is set up

[Hovis Dexter]

If you only have FM19 installed then the only sub-directory of "Sports Interactive" will be "Football Manager 2019" and in such a case you can do as you suggest and copy the entire "Sports Interactive" directory onto the new computer and overwrite the new files that were created when you did the fresh installation on your new computer. This should not overwrite anything that shouldn't be overwritten. Just to be safe, I don't do it that way. I only copy directories that were not created during the fresh installation.  So I copy "filters", "graphics", "tactics", "views" and any other directories that are not showing after the fresh installation. Also, if you are using an edited data base this should be copied to the "editor data" directory. For example, I have Brexit disabled and copied the file "!NO Brexit!.fmf" from my old computer to the new one. Hope this helps.

 

[sportsfan67016]

On 19/03/2019 at 14:17, Hovis Dexter said:

If you only have FM19 installed then the only sub-directory of "Sports Interactive" will be "Football Manager 2019" and in such a case you can do as you suggest and copy the entire "Sports Interactive" directory onto the new computer and overwrite the new files that were created when you did the fresh installation on your new computer. This should not overwrite anything that shouldn't be overwritten. Just to be safe, I don't do it that way. I only copy directories that were not created during the fresh installation.  So I copy "filters", "graphics", "tactics", "views" and any other directories that are not showing after the fresh installation. Also, if you are using an edited data base this should be copied to the "editor data" directory. For example, I have Brexit disabled and copied the file "!NO Brexit!.fmf" from my old computer to the new one. Hope this helps.

 

Yeah..I will only be installing FM19. I will be clean installing Windows 10 OS shortly so Ive bought the game but haven't installed it yet. I don't do any editing of the game at all. I'll have to take notice of exactly what files are newly created in the Sportsinteractive folder after the fresh installation because it sounds like you don't like to risk something being overwritten there. Your just to be safe method might be the best. So I'll have to see what extra files and folders are created in the Documents/Sportsinteractive folder after a game has been set up and where exactly the saved game is stored etc

[Weston]

I'm using a custom database in addition to the downloaded graphics and third party workarounds dealing with the weird copyright issues, etc. Does this change the way I should go about it? I'm still a bit confused...

[Hovis Dexter]

The custom data base is, almost certainly, in your existing “editor data” folder, if so copy it to the new “editor data” folder. As for the other things you mention, if you can’t locate the files on your original computer why not just follow the instructions that you were given when you first obtained the modifications?

Edited March 22, 2019 by Hovis Dexter

[Weston]

So I managed to transfer everything over okay (I didn't bother with the database that added Serie D where I began my career because I'm in Serie A now anyway) but unfortunately all of the club and competition names reverted back to the incorrect defaults, and now there seems to be no way to get the correct edited ones back because it's a change that needs to be made before starting the save... very sad.

[Hovis Dexter]

If you follow the instructions to change the club and competition names I think that you may well find that all is well. I say this because although the name change hack should ideally be made before starting a save the save that you copied over from your original computer was, I believe, created after you installed the hack on your original computer. Try it and see.

[Weston]

Managed to get them back with this trick. Guess I'll just have to live without the club nicknames. Oh well.

[colmun]

Hi
I have just got a new laptop and followed the above advice by copying and pasting all the Football Manager 20 folders from my old laptop.

I have already downloaded FM20 on Steam on the new laptop, but for some reason when I go to load FM none of the saved data comes up. Is there something I’ve done wrong?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Weston]

9 minutes ago, colmun said:

Hi
I have just got a new laptop and followed the above advice by copying and pasting all the Football Manager 20 folders from my old laptop.

I have already downloaded FM20 on Steam on the new laptop, but for some reason when I go to load FM none of the saved data comes up. Is there something I’ve done wrong?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

If you're using a Mac the file locations have moved for FM20. Now you have to open a Finder window, click Go, hold down Option, click Library which will appear, then go through the normal path.

[colmun]

4 minutes ago, Weston said:

If you're using a Mac the file locations have moved for FM20. Now you have to open a Finder window, click Go, hold down Option, click Library which will appear, then go through the normal path.

Not using a Mac, just a normal laptop. 

[Weston]

Just now, colmun said:

Not using a Mac, just a normal laptop. 

No idea then, you'll have to ask one of the smarter people in this thread.

[colmun]

6 minutes ago, Weston said:

No idea then, you'll have to ask one of the smarter people in this thread.

Ok thanks.