Where are the Properties.Default.Settings stored?

Question

Hello all -

I thought I knew this, but today I'm being proven wrong - again.

Running VS2008, .NET 3.5 and C#. I added the User settings to the Properties Settings tab with default values, then read them in using this code:

myTextBox.Text = Properties.Settings.Default.MyStringProperty;

Then, after the user edits the value in the options dialog I save it like this:

Properties.Settings.Default.MyStringProperty = myTextBox.Text;
Properties.Settings.Default.Save();

My question is, where is this new value saved? the MyApp.exe.config file in the executable directory is not updated, it still contains the default values. Plus, as far as I can tell, none of the other files in that directory are updated either! However, when the program reads the value back in, it gets the changed value, so I know it's saved somewhere...

This isn't just academic, I needed to be able to manually edit the value this morning and got myself stumped when I couldn't find anything that was changing.

Thanks for any insight, Dave

Answer 1

User-specific settings are saved in the user's Application Data folder for that application. Look for a user.config file.

I don't know what you expected, since users often don't even have write access to the executable directory in the first place.

Answer 2

There is a folder called "Properties" under your project root folder, and there are *.settings file under that folder. That's where it gets stored.

Answer 3

In order to work with newer versions of Windows' policy of only allowing read access by default to the Program Files folder (unless you prompt for elevation with UAC, but that's another topic...), your application will have a settings folder under %userprofile%\appdata\local or %userprofile%\Local Settings\Application Data depending on which version of Windows you're running, for settings that are user specific. If you store settings for all users, then they'll be in the corresponding folder under C:\users or C:\Documents and Settings for all user profiles (ex: C:\users\public\appdata\local).

Answer 4

it is saved in your Documents and Settings\%user%\Local Settings\Application Data......etc search for a file called user.config there

the location may change however.

Answer 5

This is such a pathetic nightmare that it makes me wish I'd never tried to use settings at all. I cannot get the correct value during debug after 45 mintues of trying because there is no way to figure out where blasted data is stored. Further, a .dll which provides UI cannot use data binding to a settings object provided by another assembly. This makes them worse than useless.

Do not use the settings object. Just serialize a hashmap and get on with your life.