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The Falcon's Nest

... how to soar with Opera...

Posts tagged with "upgrade"

If you had disabled the mail client in Opera 7.xx...

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Opera 7.xx had an option in the Preferences dialog by which you could disable all the mail client functionality. If you had done that, and then installed Opera 8.xx on top of that Opera 7.xx installation, you cannot use the mail client at all. That means no mail, news or newsfeeds... :frown: The UI options to activate mail (e.g. under Tools > Mail and chat accounts) are unavailable, and there is no way through the UI to enable them.

Here is what you need to do:
  • Find the location of your profile\opera6.ini location in Help > About Opera (look for 'Preferences' there)
  • Close Opera completely
  • Edit this file in your favorite editor (e.g. Wordpad)
  • Find the line that looks like "Show E-mail Client = 0"
  • Delete this line
  • Save your changes and exit
  • Restart Opera

If you have upgraded to Opera 9.xx and do not see the mail client, make sure to enable opera:config#UserPrefs|ShowE-mailClient and restart Opera.

This should make the mail client enabled again. Of course, till you set up an actual account, you still won't see any of the mail client UI elements. You can set up a mail, newsgroup or chat account through Tools > Mail and chat accounts or subscribe to a newsfeed by clicking on the feed icon in the address field.

Migrating custom settings from one Opera installation to another

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If you want to transfer your customizations in one Opera installation (e.g. bookmarks, contacts, Wand passwords, custom toolbar and/or menu set-ups etc) to another (possibly newer, cleaner) Opera installation; the following steps describe how to do it.

The simplest thing to do is to make a back up copy of your Opera profile folder. Then in the new Opera installation, completely remove (i.e. delete or rename) the existing Opera profile folder; and replace it with the one you had backed up.

NOTE: If you are doing the above, I strongly recommend NOT migrating the opera6.ini file in the old profile. It contains path-specific information which may not work in your new installation.

All the information in this post is derived from the excellent Opera Support article. Following is a more condensed, step-by-step procedure (at the risk of duplication) to migrate specific settings.

º First read the aforementioned Opera Support article

º In your old Opera installation, look at Help > About Opera and note the path to your Opera directory -- this is your profile folder (alternatively, if you are using Opera 9 and above click here)

º Do the same for your new Opera installation

º Close all instances of Opera

º Copy the following files from your old Opera profile folder to the new Opera profile folder (copy only those files that you want to migrate)

  • Bookmarks: opera6.adr
  • Notes: notes.adr
  • Wand passwords: wand.dat (if you had set a master password, you will also need to copy the Certificates files -- and set a master password in the new installation)
  • Contacts: contacts.adr
  • Cookies: cookies4.dat
  • Certificates: opcacrt6.dat, opcert6.dat, opssl6.dat
  • Search preferences: search.ini (if upgrading to Opera 9, you will need to edit this file and change the version number to 8)
  • Blocked content preferences: urlfilter.ini (new in Opera 9)
  • Site-specific settings: override.ini (new in Opera 9)
  • Speed dial: speeddial.ini (new in Opera 9.2)
  • Widgets: widgets.adr (and the widgets/ folder) (new in Opera 9)

º Copy the following folders from your old Opera profile folder to the new Opera profile folder (copy only those folders that you want to migrate)

  • Favicons: images/
  • Keyboard (customized keyboard shortcuts): keyboard/
  • Menu (customized menus): menu/
  • Mouse (customized mouse gestures): mouse/
  • Sessions (saved sessions): sessions/
  • Skins (downloaded / custom skins): skin/
  • Styles (custom user style sheets): styles/
  • Toolbar (customized toolbar setup): toolbar/
  • Voice (customized voice setup): voice/
  • Widgets: widgets/ (and the widgets.adr file) (new in Opera 9)

º Start the new Opera

If you migrated a customized setup for toolbars, menu etc; make sure that in the new Opera you set Preferences to use the new setup (and not Opera standard).

Migrating email, news and feeds from one Opera installation to another

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If you are in the habit of installing the various previews and test releases that Opera comes up with periodically; or simply like to do a fresh, clean install of Opera when you upgrade to the next public release; one of the concerns is how to migrate your messages (email, news and newsfeeds). Following is a simple procedure that describes what to do.

Note that this description only applies when your new Opera installation is pristine (i.e. you have no email, news or newsfeed messages set up in the new Opera install).

Also note that the mail storage format is different in Opera 9 compared to Opera 8.xx. If you need to migrate an Opera 9 mail setup back to Opera 8.xx, this method will not work. In that case, you must export your Sent and Received messages in Opera 9 and import them back into Opera 8.xx.


  1. In your old Opera installation, look at Help > About Opera and note the path to your 'Mail directory'
  2. Do the same for your new Opera installation (if 'Mail directory' is not found in Help > About Opera, note the location of the 'Opera directory' -- this is your Opera profile folder)
  3. Close all instances of Opera
  4. Rename the Mail directory for the new Opera
  5. Copy the old Mail directory in its place (if the new Opera did not have a Mail directory, copy the old Mail directory and place it next to the profile folder)
  6. Start the new Opera

If you already have some mail in the new Opera installation, your best recourse is to export the messages from your old Opera installation and import them into the new Opera installation.

You can import and export newsfeeds quite easily using the File > Import and Export... menu. For mail / news messages, see below.

Do the following in your old Opera installation:
  1. Right-click in the Mail panel, and set 'Show messages from' to one account
  2. Open the Received filter message list
  3. In the mail toolbar, enable all the View > Show > Show *** settings
  4. In the Mail panel, right-click on Received and select Export...
  5. In the resulting dialog, select an appropriate directory and filename for the exported message (e.g. AccountName_Received.mbs in the Desktop directory, where AccountName is the name of the account) and export the messages
  6. Repeat steps 2-5, replacing Received with Sent
  7. Repeat steps 1-6 for all accounts

You can now import these files into the new Opera installation using File > Import and Export >> Import mail >> Import generic mbox file. Remember to import the messages to the appropriate accounts, and to 'Move to Sent' the sent message files.

Upgrading to Opera 7.50 from Opera 7.xx

One small problem, one huge confusion... One can thus sum up the upgrading process for novice Opera users.

The small problem being Opera 7.50's default installation path is set to C:\Program files\Opera75, instead of C:\Program files\Opera7. This makes it install in a new location by default, and not on top of the previous Opera 7.xx installation a user may have. That, in turn, creates great confusion about how to migrate profile data such as bookmarks, contacts and Mail from the older version to the newer one.

Here is the correct upgrade process, made simple for you. :)

º Back up all relevant data from Opera 7.xx
º Close all instances of Opera
º Install Opera 7.50 in the same location as Opera 7.xx, using the same installer mode as before (e.g. if you had 7.xx in single-user mode, you better be installing 7.50 in single-user mode as well)
º Start Opera
º Set Preferences to use default Toolbar, Menu and Keyboard setups
º Customize to your heart's content

July 2008
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