Tech and life

I came across a really useful blog post recently at Online Tech Tips on transferring your TweetDeck settings to another computer. It’s well worth a read if you are using TweetDeck on say a laptop and desktop and basically it involves copying two important files from your TweetDeck folder under Application Data to the same folder on the second PC. On my PC, the files are:

c:\Documents and Settings\[user name]\Application Data\TweetDeckFast.[large number]\Local Store\preferences_techandlife.xml

c:\Documents and Settings\[user name]\Application Data\TweetDeckFast.[large number]\Local Store\td_26_techandlife.db

However, it occurred to me that this method can also be usefully applied to restore your TweetDeck groups should you accidentally delete a group which you have spent a lot of time and effort defining. If for some reason you close a Group column, there is no way back unless you have backed up and can restore these two files. The file td_26_techandlife seems to be the important one containing the Group data.

The scrolling arrow and the remove column button are pretty close together in TweetDeck and not very distinctive so it is possible to select to delete a column when scrolling through your tweets:

Admittedly, if you chose to delete a column you get a warning that this is irreversible, but it’s nice to know that if you do mess up, your hard drive dies, or you decide you want to restore a deleted Group, it can be done.

So I suggest you add these two important files to your regular back-up routines and restore them to the above folder should the need arise.

Edit: Version 0.26 of TweetDeck introduced synchronization of groups to multiple computers so it’s now possible to backup and restore your columns. Click the Settings button in the top right corner of TweetDeck then click the Sync tab. Register for a TweetDeck account to sync and backup your columns.