Forum: MemoQ support
Topic: Transferring license from one PC to another one
Poster: Thomas T. Frost
Post title: Same here
I've been migrating to a new PC over the last week, and I've just been through the final fight with the MemoQ software. They don't make it easy for you.
The licence question is easy: you can use your licence on two computers. MemoQ will automatically get your licence for you from the MemoQ server when you start it the first time on the new computer.
But when it comes to the migration, the advice from Kilgray is pretty useless. Nobody seems to have given it a thought that translators sometimes need to migrate to new hardware. They have written a couple of not-very-useful articles, probably just to pretend that they have done something about migration, but their method to migrate the projects involves manually opening or re-checking out every single project on the new computer, which is obviously an utterly hopeless migration method.
They also tell you to export all your resources, set up new resources on the new computer, and import all the exported ones manually.
And finally they tell you that you will lose all your settings.
There was no useful help to get from support.
This is even worse than migrating Outlook. If they designed a method for emptying a bathtub the same way, they would tell you to use a teaspoon.
So I did something else. I looked around in my system and found that all MemoQ's files are in just three locations:
TBs, TMs, and other resources:
C:\ProgramData\MemoQ
Settings:
C:\Users\{user}\AppData\Roaming\MemoQ
Projects:
C:\Users\{user}\My Documents\My memoQ Projects
There is no need to worry about the Windows Registry, as they don't use it much, and only for fixed values.
The installation takes care of the C:\Program Files (x86) folder, so there is no need to worry about that either.
So here are the migration steps for migrating from a Windows computer with MemoQ 8.5 to a new computer. It probably also works for other versions, but it's probably wise to ensure that both computers have the same version.
After installing MemoQ on the new computer, I shut MemoQ down on the old computer and copied the above three folders to the new computer (via a flash drive, but you could also use Google Drive or another cloud method). If these folders already exist on the new computer, they should be renamed first. When everything works, the renamed ones can be deleted.
Then I started up MemoQ on the new computer. It first prompted me to get my licence from their server. Easy.
Then it prompted me to re-enter my server credentials for the last project I had worked on. Although parts of the credentials are in the AppData folder, the passwords are probably stored in a way that means that they can't just be copied like this.
I got the error message below. It does not seem important. I ignored it. It did not show up again.
After this, it seemed to work. All my TBs, TMs, etc. are there, and so are my settings and projects.
This method is much like putting your entire house on rollers when moving instead of moving all the furniture out and back in.
In my case, it was a bit more complicated, as I needed to change both my Windows user and part of my Documents file path. As MemoQ has stored the old user and path everywhere, it would not be able to find the projects just like that.
The solution I found was to define two so-called junctions from the old locations to the new. This simply means that all MemoQ's requests to the old locations will be automatically redirected by Windows to the new locations. Once you know how to set it up, it's very simple. See [url removed] .
I had first tried to update the file paths in MemoQ's files, but I ran into trouble because some of the files are SQL CE databases, which you can't just edit. Although I found a utility for SQL line commands, I haven't found the right commands yet.
But Kilgray should be providing a decent migration method. Their recommendations are just about the most complicated method they could dream up.
[Edited at 2018-10-08 04:41 GMT]
[Edited at 2018-10-08 04:46 GMT]